Seven, meet Seven
by We'reAllABitOdd
Summary: In a search gone wrong, one seventh wheel ends up in the world of another. But, if there are two seventh wheels, is there even one at all? What ties could this mistake possibly reveal? What secrets, hidden to even the one they belong to, will be uncovered due to error?
1. Chapter 1

When the meteor crashed outside New York City the whole world rejoiced it hadn't been a mile closer to the big city. There were no casualties but that would not have been the case if the city had been hit.

No one had been suspecting it and no one would be able to escape if they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. In fact, while it was the only name they had for it, the 'thing' wasn't quite a meteor at all, rather it was a large piece of off-white debris made from a material they had yet not been able to identify.

That was the news being relayed globally in a plethora of languages. Some channels had reporters at the scene, standing right by the boundary those not working with the scene were allowed to cross, others had live video footage that studio reporters talked over. Not one person had not caught the news.

Then the scene, already in disarray, was plunged suddenly into a complete commotion when a pained groan was heard, the source not seen. Then it had rung through the air again and the crowds had quietened. All eyes present at the scene slowly and unsurely drifted to the debris and the crater it rested in, speech of even professionals fading away and crane lifting the meteor stopping.

Then everything began to move again, faster than before as they were certain the very human, pained noise had come from beneath the weird debris they had been told had not harmed anybody. It was a wonder, after being crushed beneath that great weight, the person beneath was even capable of making such a sound.

All cameras were turned away as the debris was placed onto the waiting truck and the precautionary paramedics present at the scene rushed down into the crater where there lay a figure the public were shielded from seeing.

The figure was broken and bloody, wearing something that essentially screamed "sci-fi" making it appear as though he had been at a convention of some sort before he had ended up in the predicament he was currently in. But it was definitely good quality for a costume: the material was too robust, too shiny, a material that would be difficult for anyone to make much out of. He wore a helmet too, or at least what had once been one. Now it lay around his head in shards, a few buried within the skin of his face.

There was glass too, it was a wonder the boy had not been blinded by all the shards.

The position in which he was laying was an unnatural one, accessorised by an arm bent in such a way it was surely broken in more places than one. There was an order for cameras to be turned off and the public to leave the scene as he was hurriedly lifted onto a stretcher, covered in blood and dirt that hid just how much he may have been hurt.

By the end of the day, even if his image had not been displayed publicly even once, everyone knew of the boy beneath the debris. To some he was Meteor Boy, to others he was Miracle boy, to all he was a mystery.

* * *

He was sat by the foot of the teenager's bed, waiting impatiently for him to wake up, foot taping an unsteady rhythm on the floor and fingers clumsily twirling a pen.

The boy was never peaceful, always moving but never showing signs of waking. His upturned nose crinkled, his eyes tensed tighter shut, his long limbs witched. It was almost as though his body wanted to wake up but couldn't.

One of his arms was plastered from one end to the other and had been operated on to fix the placement of the bones after the sever break, the other, just like the rest of him, was covered in bandages and plasters, a few stitches dotted here and there to keep the more serious wounds closed.

He was going to wake up soon, the hospital staff had assured him, but he did not feel comfortable. He had to talk to the teen as soon as he was able, the moment after he woke up he would have to smother him in questions, begging to know who he was. But he needed the money and to get the money he'd have to do the job.

He was taken back when he was released from the cage his thoughts formed. He was looking straight into azure eyes, dark blue that didn't quite match the face that framed them.

The boy was blinking his tired eyes, looking through the veil of his eyelashes as he tried to pry his eyes further open so he could see clearly, drawing the world before him into focus. He was surprised to see the scene before him, sterile and clean, white and somehow off-feeling. He was not put at ease by the fact there was a stranger sitting in front of him, staring with wide eyes as though shocked or scared.

The boy, slowly and in slurred Spanish that the man would not have been able to understand even if it was spoken clearly, began to speak as he sat up, looking at the man unsurely.

He felt his stomach drop a little. If the teen didn't speak English they would find someone who spoke Spanish and he would lose the job he definitely needed.

"Hello?" It was a question, a hesitant one spoken only to see if the boy could respond in English.

"Hi?" The response was also a question, nervously spoken with the raising of the hand not plastered.

"You speak English?" After receiving a gentle hum in response he dared to continue "Do you mind I ask you some questions?"  
"Go ahead." There wasn't the accent of someone speaking the language as a second one present but the accent there wasn't the one from New York.

"Okay. We'll start easy." the man righted the position of his pen and lifted the leather-bound notebook from its place on the table beside him "I'm Mark Roberts How about yourself?"

His stomach dropped again as the boy's eyes shut lightly and his head began to slowly drift from one side to the other, hands mussing his short hair, already messy from sleep. He began to mumble, freezing for a moment and terrifying Mark as he sat before him.

There was a scene playing behind his closed eyelids, warped and blurry, nothing more than an odd formation of shapes and colour that didn't quite form a recognisable image. There were noises too, just as warped as the imagery, sounding as though they were spoken through water and barely conveying the words intended.

"Lance!"

"Lance!"

"Lance"

The next thing he knew there was a large, tan hand clamped over his shoulder, shaking him out of whatever unpleasant tence his mind had been dragged down into.

He angled his eyes downwards, looking at his hands as he knit one slender finger though the space

between two others.

There was only silence for a moment, then two, three, four.

Until he dared break it with a word that shook as he breathed it, feeling more confused than he felt he had any right to be.

"Lance."

Mark glanced at the boy before him, staring at his hands as though he held the answers in them, confused by the single word he had uttered. "Hmm?"

"Lance." he spoke more surely this time around "My name." he confirmed "It's Lance." He felt as though he were telling himself more than he was Mark.

"Okay Lance, you got a last name?"

"No." He was about to say the thing he didn't want to admit "I don't have anything but that: Lance. I don't remember _anything_."

"Nothing?" Mark's stomach had hit the floor, eyes twitching a he watched his job grow harder.

"Nothing." He confirmed. Then the silence that followed came in waves. "Do I sound like a parrot to you right now?" Then Lance easily broke it.

"A bit." Mark agreed through a slight laugh. "Why are you so unaffected by your amnesia?"

"I'd tell you but I don't know. Might be the amnesia."

"It might."

He was let out of the hospital and put into Mark's care after another couple of days. It should be clarified that care was only temporary and mark was in charge of finding him a sense of normalcy even if no one knew who he was. Because they didn't.

A picture had been taken and published over the news channels, in advertisements and in newspapers. But there were no claims. The number attached had not been called once seriously, there were some prank calls from delinquent teenagers who didn't have a grasp of the situation. But that was it.

He was a social media hit too. The 'MeteorBoy' and 'MiracleBoy' hashtags were trending across the internet, full of theories as well as awareness posts displaying actual concern for the boy. Lots of people believed he was a liar too, perhaps a young orphan desperate for attention.

Mark didn't think so.

His small apartment really wasn't the best of places for a child but a teenager like Lance was fine. Well, sort of. He was fine but also kind of lonely. He didn't have any friends and there was no one else under the age of twenty five in the building in which he took temporary residence. He had grown to like the boy and could not see him being so dishonest. Well, there was the fact he had not slipped up once, too.

His name was lance and that was all he knew.

But the summer holidays were ending and it was becoming clear he would need to find the boy somewhere to go to school. He already knew that would be difficult. The boy had no legal forms of identification, no official age, birthdate or surname and he had politely declined the (again) temporary solution of adopting Mark's until they found his.

Lance wouldn't say it but he was starting to think there would be no 'when'. He would never get himself back.

He realised, as soon as the suspicion came to him, that he was mourning the loss of something he was not even entirely convinced of the existence of.

Mark was running out of options as the new school year grew nearer and nearer. He was beginning to worry - there was absolutely no way he could possibly home-school the boy but the other options were wearing thin.

There were no schools for troubled children in the area and it was certain those were the only type he would possibly get Lance accepted at when he, at least legally, did not exist.

He had exhausted every school he thought an option, each one, despite possessing a less than favourable reputation, had been unwilling to take in a student who they, along with everyone else, knew nothing of.

Mark liked Lance, he really did. He like the awful jokes the boy made, the weird references to nothing he made with a single raised eyebrow that were funny to here even if they were a nod to his amnesia, he liked watching the boy as he moved around tirelessly. However, he would not sleep until he found a way to be free of him - not in a mean way, it was better for the boy to be away room mark's apartment that meant he had to sleep on the couch, eat takeout every day or make food for them both himself (thankfully, he seemed to have some sense in the kitchen, even if cooking made his brow scrunch and his lips twitch like there was a memory sitting on the tip of his tongue, boxed up).

Just as mark's hope was beginning to truly drain, a miracle happened.

He stumbled across a school that promised to accept all, a school that would take in the strangest and worst cases of troubled children who needed to be 'fixed'.

Lance had never once been happy with the types of schools his painfully plain application was being sent off to but he had never complained - it was better than nothing even if it, among everything else that felt _wrong_ felt the most _off_ of all.

The names of this school?

It was, rather oddly 'The Wilderness School.'


	2. Chapter 2

The world passed by before Lance's eyes as he stared at it through the window of Mark's car, the bland, nothingness of the desert blurring as his lax focus continued to decline.

He had long ago lost track of how long they had spent in the car, the small, beat-up silver vehicle becoming something much more like a mobile prison in his mind. In that very same mind there was an inkling of familiarity - perhaps not with the old, busted car but certainly with the idea of travel.

It was one of the first familiarities he had stumbled across, one of the first things that had triggered an odd sense in his emptied mind.

He didn't know whether he liked it or not.

Sure, it was beyond frustrating to know nothing at all about who he was but it was infinitely worse to be _so close_ to _something_ yet still held tight within the clutches of that _nothing._

At last, amongst all of the dust and barrenness there emerged a large, industrial looking building. He found it strange - he had been comparing Mark's car (which smelt overwhelmingly of coffee) to a prison when the building in front of him could very easily have passed as one. Perhaps it was one.

There were other cars approaching, teenagers clambering out, slouched and groaning, trudging away from parents that looked as though they weren't quite sure how to act towards their trouble causing kids. Some other kids had not exited so 'willingly'. Parents were clasping the ankles of their children, pulling as the kids grasped anything they could - they were entirely unwilling to leave.

* * *

Lance was left alone very soon after being dropped off. Mark had work to do, or so he claimed. In actuality, a rather thuggish looking boy, taller than him but perhaps an inch or two shorter than Lance (that boy never seemed to stop growing - he was lanky as it was!) was staring at him with dark eyes, his hair in an undercut, loose strands framing his square head, large arms crossed in front of his chest. He had been intimidated.

Lance was left, standing alone awkwardly in the clothes Mark had brought for him, the t-shirt, hoodie, jacket and jeans he refused to take off despite the heat - he was sure he had felt worse - as an assortment of kids, some thuggish in appearance and others astoundingly ordinary, passed by with parents that didn't quite look at them, dragging cases much larger than his.

Feigning confidence he could assure anyone who asked he was not feeling, he tucked his hands into the pockets of the baggy coat after pulling the hoodie up, the shadow shielding his eyes from the harsh glare of the sun, and walked through the doors, following a girl with the messiest hair he had ever seen and her out-of-place, overly-composed father.

The minute he walked in, he felt cold, like all the warmth had been sapped from the air, locked out of the bland, grey structure. The girl in front of him shivered too, hands reaching up to rub the goosebumps off of her arms, exposed by her ridiculous Hello-Kitty tank top. Her dad paused for a moment before signing her in and passing her bag over, leaving with a quick hug before rushing away as though he had somewhere much better to be

She stood in the corner for a moment, unsure of what to do after her father's departure, watching him as he signed himself in, her pretty, face and kaleidoscopic eyes displaying a sort of confused interest - probably as to why he was the only kid she had seen thus far without a guardian.

* * *

Piper watched as the tall boy with the dark blue eyes signed himself in, toting an unreasonably small suitcase behind him - that thing could only have contained enough to last most people a weekend, not an entire school year!

He was alone and seemed far too comfortable with the strange, unhomely surroundings that made her feel as uncomfortable as she did.

Another boy joined her, this one much shorter but sharing the same odd lack of discomfort. He looked familiar, the hyperactive boy she had seen on the 'open day' her father's assistant had taken her to. Leo, she remembered.

That was another odd thing about the boy she was watching with a type of bland curiosity as she attempted to figure out what she was meant to do - she had never seen him before, he had been absent from that awkward day, on which she had met the other 'delinquents' with nowhere else to go.

But then he turned around, staring at her and making it known to her that he knew exactly what she had been doing. Leo snickered, nimble fingers twiddling a few random objects as he deftly assembled them into some kind of odd device, as a blush spread across her cheeks.

She had learnt that a lot of the kids that would soon be her peers could be dangerous, that aggravating them was unwise. She felt uneasy as he stared at her for a moment through dark blue eyes, the colour of which she had never before seen the likes of.

Thankfully, after a drawn out minute of unsure, unsettled, uneasy staring, a funny lop-sided smile took over his face, his eyes widening and a single eyebrow lifting.

Leo snickered again and, though she had no idea why, she joined him, eyes never really leaving the stranger who looked on at them oddly for a moment more before bursting into laughter himself.

* * *

Leo had been glad when the boy he had watched Piper awkwardly watching had been assigned as his roommate for the year. It was like a little light in the darkness of the surely hellish time to come.

They had talked to the boy for a while after and he had been somewhat delighted when he learnt the boy spoke Spanish - Leo spoke Spanish! The boy was funny as well and, purely for the purpose of irritating Piper, they had spent a while conversing in the language she didn't understand, speaking about complete nonsense and laughing about nothing until all three of them had fallen apart in unattractive giggles.

He had the same sort of hyperactivity to him as Leo himself as well.

That was all Leo knew, that was all the information he could gather that he regarded as worthwhile besides a name: Lance.

Leo of all people knew how to respect that - he didn't have the best history and he wasn't all that keen on sharing it.

But it was odd, regardless. There hadn't been so much as a surname included in the conversation and Lance often skirted around conversations, almost as though he didn't know how to answer, not so much that he didn't want to. He hadn't explained the cast on his arm, either.

The rooms weren't the nicest, small and impersonal, a chest of drawers to share, a small wardrobe and a rickety old bunk bed were pushed against the frightfully bare walls, the white sheets thin, the air smelling musty and like the damp despite the air outside being so stiflingly dry. Lance had instantly claimed the upper two of the four drawers for himself.

"I'm taller!" He insisted "It's only fair - you don't have to bend as far to reach the bottom drawer!" he repeated until Leo gave in.

Once the room had been sorted and they had unpacked, in this context meaning both meagre cases of belongings had been emptied, Lance's into his drawers and, to the taller boy's chagrin, Leo's all over the floor and his bed. Again, Lance had taken the top one, the same argument being insistently used.

Leo knew already he wasn't going to win, though Lance could not convince him to pick up his stuff; he hadn't dared claim a space as his own in so long he wasn't going to miss the chance when it finally came! Besides, Lance's obsession with cleanliness and the appearance of the room was a bit strange, much like the boy himself.

A loud bell rang suddenly, deafening the boys as they lay silently on their respective beds, Leo staring at the underside of Lance's as he stared at the off-coloured, stained ceiling above him. All in all, the wilderness school didn't see like much of a school to either of them, especially Lance who really hadn't done anything that would warrant hi going there rather than a regular school - it wasn't his fault his memory had left him!

That was the bell indicating they were to meet up for dinner, the last assembly of the delinquents before their actual educations began the day after.

They filed into a line to collect the sludge that barely resembled food, Piper somehow managing to find her way up to them despite the other girls being rather far behind; they were in the middle of the group of boys their year - why had the wardens let her get away with joining them? Of course, they weren't complaining, it was nice to have a friend in a place like that.

Piper had opted for the vegetarian option but it seemed as though she was one of the only ones - they hadn't been able to do so much as identify what the stuff was _meant_ to be! The water tasted kind of stale too, like it had been sitting in the pipes (surely they weren't very clean) for too long, or perhaps had been left under the sweltering heat of the unrelenting sun outside.

No one really cared though, they were all intent on washing out the taste of the sludge with the unpleasantly warm beverage they had been provided in small, flimsy, plastic solo-cups. The clear, ridged plastic was cloudy and Lance didn't dare look into the cup properly, he was slightly fearful of finding the water to be less than clear. Instead, he ate as quickly as he could and gulped down the water even faster, trying not to think of it as he felt the water run down his throat.

Then someone, a rather smarmy looking boy whose hair very much looked as though it had been dyed with oil before being coated in an entire container of hair gel, surely in a failed attempt to emulate that of some celebrity he liked, decided to use his spoon as a catapult to fling a glob of his 'food' at a girl sitting a few tables away.

Leo didn't know whether or not she was a friend of his, but, either way, she wasn't happy. She screamed, voice high enough to make his ears ring, as the brownish goop impacted her white top before railing its way down and onto the floor behind her. She grabbed a handful of the food belonging to the girl next to her and hurled it back, her own brightly coloured, aged, cheap food tray being empty, hitting the boy beside him by mistake, knocking his spectacles to the floor.

Then it was all out war.

Food went flying this way and that, kids not caring who they hit, as the young, seemingly inexperienced warden tried to halt the mess-making to no avail. It was loud as people were screaming in outrage or laughing to the point where they couldn't think straight, let alone throw straight.

It made perfect sense that Lance would have a headache in such surroundings but, as he lay his head on the table, feeling like he should be enjoying the boisterous surroundings rather than feeling _odd_ in their midst, he didn't think that was the case.

It was a sort of nagging headache that, no matter how much he massaged his temples, just would not ease. The cool metal of the table didn't help either. It was like there was something sitting in a corner of his mind, cast into shadow, just out of both view and reach. Really, he felt rather dizzy.

Another thing that didn't help any was the sudden thunderous yelling of a much more senior warden, the younger, hopeless one having resorted to alerting him over the intercom after resigning to his own incapability. He groaned, unheard over the booming that had, in the space of half minute, managed to silence the entire hall of loud, problem kids; something the other warden hadn't managed to do in ten.

As they left the hall, the headache ceased but he didn't know why it had happened in the first place - a memory he was desperately trying to grasp at, perhaps? The crowd thinned as students found their roommates and/or rooms and disappeared into the place that was strictly theirs, although Lance was unconvinced it wasn't being monitored by some authority.

Eventually, he and leo had returned to their own.

Leo had had something of a laughing fit at the green face green mask Lance had put on after changing into his pajamas, a fair while before lights out. He washed off the mask a while later and just sat on the floor in front of leo as he perched on the end of his bed, clearing away Leo's disorganised mess before, of course.

"Hmm?" Leo cocked his head. He was looking at Lance slightly curiously again. With a history like leo's, he had met every odd person there was to be met - or so he had thought until he had met the boy who sat before him, blue eyes glancing at him like he was trying to puzzle him out. The blue cast, he realised, the other boy wore was a bit too clean - whenever he saw kids with casts walking along anywhere they had been signed or severely dirtied. It was almost as though he had no one to have signed it. There was the case with the pajamas and clothes as well - they looked cheap, not an odd thing on its own but, with the matter of Lance's consideration to appearance, it seemed rather strange. He could have just been unable to afford anything more expensive which may well have been the case but, even if that was true, it seemed to leo as though it were something more - the fact that all of it was new might have contributed to that at least minorly.

Lane extended a hand, marker held loosely by the tips of his fingers "Sign?"

Leo's signature was sloppy but that didn't stop him from writing his name on the barren thing. "How much longer have you got to wear this for?"

He hummed, tilting his head "Not sure, I don't know if mark even told me, actually?"

"Mark?"  
"My guardian." He made air quotes around the word 'guardian'. How peculiar.

Another bell rang.

"Lights out." Leo said as he laid his head on the pillow and pulled the thin sheet up to his chin, watching as Lance climbed into the bed over his.

"It's ridiculous, isn't it?" lance said as he swung his long, thin legs out of Leo's view. Leo made another questioning noise "making noise like that for lights out - surely at least a few people were already asleep!" he clarified "Slightly counterintuitive." His voice was suddenly muffled, as though he pulled the sheet up over his lower face, perhaps his entire head.

Leo didn't have time to think as he was suddenly overcome with a wave of tiredness.

Lance, however, couldn't fall asleep. He lay awake, Leo's snoring doing him no favours, as he continued to stare at the stained ceiling as he had before dinner, desperately grasping for things that weren't there.

 **Why hello. I would like to apologise for how long it has taken me to get this up - I promise it isn't the standard. I spent last weekend - my usual update time - in France! It's a bank holiday today and we have half term anyway so maybe an update during the week to make up for it?**

 **Sorry about not doing this during the actual weekend either, I've been trying to get through the entirety of Detective Conan as quickly as possible (it's incredible, by the way), but, let's be real, that won't be possible in the space of two days.**

 **This is just something that may be helpful to me if anyone would be willing to help (if you can), but how do dress codes work? We have uniforms here and describing clothes in a bit more detail than my oblivious self is currently capable of can help to get across minor details about characters if it's done in a way that's not tedious or entirely unnecessary. I don't want to do something entirely unreasonable and the only things you ever find over the internet are very extreme and often unreasonable.**

 **Also, I am really sorry if there are any typos in this, especially ones that make it hard to read (there probably are, there always are and you never notice until you've published) or, for anyone that speaks American English, if my British English seems strange (I hope it doesn't, but I know sometimes I'll read things in American English and it takes my mind a minute to process the fact that something isn't misspelled, it's just an Americanism).**

 **Anyway, enough of that - I hope people enjoy this. I'm not going to lie, I was very surprised to have gotten any response from the first chapter whatsoever. I know I'm the type of person who rarely reads fics when there's only one chapter up (I tend to get scared I'll get attached and then it'll never be updated and I'll end up disappointed with this story that'll never be finished randomly appearing in my memory every now and then, especially as there's rarely enough to make a proper educated guess about at that point) and I'm aware this isn't up in the most popular of sections on this site.**

 **So yeah, I thank you a lot for everyone who took the time to read this, especially those who have followed, favorited, and/or reviewed.**

 **~We'reAllABitOdd**


	3. Chapter 3

Lance was an enigma.

He just didn't make sense.

Not even to Piper and Leo who considered themselves to be rather the experts on the abnormal.

There were so many things about him that exceeded the boundaries of strange. The first being his apparent lack of a surname. It was different from Piper who just did not particularly like hers and the link it drew between her and her father, she loved him, sure - she just didn't like being 'Tristan McLean's delinquent daughter'. He genuinely appeared to be lacking one.

They were addressed by the teachers by last name - Mr. valdez, Miss. Mclean - but he was just _Lance._

Secondly, there was the cast. It probably should have been of by that point in the year but Piper, in a moment of overwhelming clumsiness she had apologised for profusely again and again, had fallen from the stairs before him, landing in the support of his broken arm as he lashed it out without thinking, further damaging the healing limb.

But that wasn't the issue. The issue was the fact that, whenever asked about it, he would stutter and stumble before pretending to have forgotten the proposed topic, picking another completely unrelated one, to which he could devote himself until he was sure they had forgotten just what they had meant to say.

Third was the peculiarity of his knowledge. He knew very little of modern or classical literature. His history was all skew-whiff. But his knowledge of science, physics especially, flight dynamics even more so, was so thorough he would sometimes manage to stump the science teacher or overpower her in some type of hypothetical argument about air, and to an extent, space travel. Those arguments were always taken to Google at the end and Lance always ended up being right.

To Leo's delight, he also seemed to know a lot about mechanics, again, the knowledge leaned very drastically towards flight as well as tracking. He had mumbled a couple of times under his breath that Leo reminded him of someone but there was never a name or much of an identity. Sometimes it would seem he was trying to think of a name, but the sound usually made when doing so was the repetition of the consonant sound ' _p'_ but there were a few instances when that changed into a sharp ' _k'._

Fourth was a though confined to only Leo's mind. _School uniforms._ Lance had mentioned offhandedly on their first morning at the school as he dug through his drawer trying to find the t-shirt he wanted - all the ones he had were pretty much the same, why did it even matter?! - his surprise at the lack of uniform. Leo had paused, head halfway into a jumper that stayed over his head, unmoving, as he stared at lance through the gaps in the stitching.

"What?" Most schools in the country did not have uniforms - why would he be particularly surprised at such a thing as that?"

"Oh-" He looked around, struggling to get his shirt over the cat on his arm "Nothing. I didn't say anything."

But he had.

Last was just how familiar he looked at some points in time. Especially, Piper couldn't help but think, when he was in dim lighting. When his face was drowned of colour, as it was when she looked at him as she considered just how much of an oddity he was, plunged into a monotone visage she refused to believe could possibly have belonged to anyone else. But where had she seen it?

He was leaning back on his elbows, face tilted skywards, eyes half closed as flashes of light burst above on occasion, illuminating his features and diminishing that familiarity by a fraction. A shower of blue sparkles rained down, travelling below the spectacular view provided by their vantage point as they fizzled and died out.

It was pretty, really something to see. The velvety sky was littered with stars like freckles spattering across the face or paint flecks on an elegantly carelessly painted canvas. Those little gold flecks often became part of the show, when the attractive explosions matched them in colour.

It was quite astounding to think the desert, barren, dusty and desolate when beneath the sun, was so pretty at night. It was just as astounding that the imposing building that seemed so utterly draining to stay in was so exhilarating to be atop.

Piper had forgotten whose idea it had been, but they had all agreed to sneak out that night and watch the firework show they had caught news of.

But piper was distracted.

She got so tired of being in the dark, she surrendered herself to straight out asking.

"Hey, Lance?" He hummed a response, not taking his heavy-lidded eyes off of the night sky "Why do you never seem to answer us when we ask you about yourself?" He froze, eyes widening and limbs tensing as she continued "I doubt there's much you have to hide here - it's not like you're the only one who has stories to share that don't paint them in the best light. You know I stole a car, you know Leo has an extensive history of running away, what do you have that's so bad you have to hide it."

"Nothing."

"Then tell us!"

"No - I have nothing to tell. Literally nothing."

"What?" Leo asked, suddenly very bewildered "What do you mean you have 'literally nothing'?" He made air quotes with his fingers around the words, dropping the little device he was tampering with into his lap for a moment to do so.

"Ugh." Lace wasn't feeling all the great about telling. He dug his hand into the corresponding pocket on his jacket, pulling out a flimsy clipping of paper. He placed the crumpled sheet in Piper's ready hands.

She lifted it to her face as he watched unsurely. Of course! She practically slammed the sheet on the ground as she used her hands to haul herself to her feet, standing over him, a triumphant smile spreading across her face, growing wider by the second, hands placed on her hips as she stood in an exaggerated stance that made Lance chuckle besides himself.

"Miracle boy!" She declared, voice perhaps too loud seeing as they were blatantly disregarding the rather strict curfew supplied to them and were well aware of the consequences of being caught as well as the high probability that they would be. He nodded.

"No way," Leo said in awe, staring from his friend to the paper in piper's hand. The image present was definitely him, even if there were more cuts and bandages and plasters present, alongside a lack of colour "I thought they'd sorted that out! When the picture disappeared from the news!"

Lance shook his head "I think they might've just given up - we were getting nowhere."

"You're amnesiac." Piper confirmed. "You don't remember your last name, and everything else that's weird about you is probably some barely-there memory you can't gather up enough of to make sense of!" She exclaimed in her realisation.

"That's pretty much it." Lance nodded complacently until… "Wait? Weird?!"

Leo looked at him as though he were losing his mind, hands splayed and used to add emphasis to his expression "Obviously." He extended the word for much longer than he should have - another point of emphasis. "You show up out of nowhere, knowing nothing at all. You literally don't have a last name and are now going to a school for delinquents without a proper reason. Apparently, no one else knows who you are, either."

"You know, I do have a reason for being here." Lance deadpanned.

"Which is?" Leo was sure he already knew the answer.

"Nowhere else would accept me without proper papers, let alone with nothing more than a name, not even a definite age."

"Exactly!" it was Leo's turn to be triumphant. "How is amnesia synonymous with delinquency?"

"Did you just all yourself a delinquent?" Lance asked.

"Yes." Leo did not hesitate "Wait…" he did then, though "You don't actually know your age?"

"Nope." Lance popped the p, suddenly feeling much less awkward than he had upon the original emergence of the topic.

"So you might be in the wrong grade?" Leo checked.

"Quite probably. At the hospital, they just had a stab at guessing and decided sixteen was about accurate."

"So they can tell how long ago a body ceased to be a person but not how long a person has been one?"

 _What odd wording_ Lance thought as he snorted "What are you planning on measuring? Rigor mortis or carbon decay?"

"Fair enough."

"Is it weird?" Piper wrung the hem of her nightshirt in her hands.

"What?"

"Waking up and not remembering a thing? Is it weird?"

"What else could it be?"

"Well, I hardly doubt it's natural." Piper agreed absentmindedly. She was thinking back to the time she had reportedly stolen the car that guaranteed her a place in this hellhole. She wondered if that's what it was like for the car salesman, though to a much less drastic extent. He had given her the car, she didn't know why, but had later denied all knowledge of doing so and in such a convincing manner no one, hardly even she, believed her on the matter. Had he suddenly come to full consciousness to be met with a sinkhole in his memories, a gap in the film of life.

"But what did you do afterwards?" Leo asked between asking a few minor questions on flight dynamic for the miniature device he was currently assembling.

"Mark was assigned to me - he looked after me and found me this place."

"He found you this place? Some great guardian you've got there!"

"It was the lesser evil." Lance chuckled, laughing even more as the little contraption in Leo's hands sputtered to life, whirring in his hand for moment before, slowly and gradually, rising as it travelled in a forwards motion. Then it circled back on itself as it sped up, speeding straight into the side of Leo's head.

"Ow!" He yelled in pained protest as he mad wildly-off snatches and grabs at his little creation as it continued to buzz around his head incessantly like a particularly diligent mosquito

But then there was a noise, like a heavy boot on hard floor (presumably, that was what it was). They silenced, their laughter ceasing in a second, Leo's movements and outrage stopped mid-action. Another step. Then another. Another to follow that. And then, after a few minutes, the heavy footsteps slowly lapsed back into complete silence.

Simultaneously, Piper and Lance let out relieved breaths, slumping back so they were supporting each other's backs as they slid down to the floor. Leo made another grab for the contraption, lunging forwards in an attempt to confine it to the hollow between the palms of his hands. At the same time, in a sudden burst of speed, it too lurched forwards, flying straight for Leo's face before he could register its approach.

It drove itself straight into his eye.

"Son of a-" He yelled as he clutched his wounded eye, shaking his other fist like an angry old man. Lance fell about himself laughing as Piper began to laugh so hard she was merely gasping for breath, throwing her head back and gulping in air greedily.

She noticed, as she looked at the dark sky above, that the fireworks were over. She wasn't sure when they had finished - she didn't even know the time.

"Somehow," She said to Lance as the devious little machine took jab after jab towards its creator who began to curl up on himself as he finally resigned to his loss "I feel like you had something to do with this."

He chuckled again, making a face of mock disbelief, clasping a hand over his heart, scrunching up the front of his jacket and the nightshirt beneath "How dare?" he gasped in singsong falsetto. He then paused, looked from left to right as he screwed up his face, and said "You can't prove anything." So fast she barely caught it.

She didn't remember going back to her room or falling asleep that night but she did remember laughing so hard her stomach hurt for days afterwards.

 **A/N**

 **And here we have the other update I hinted to.**

 **Does anyone else ever just look at their search history and wonder what people would think if they saw it? I do. What are the last few things I searched?**

 **Let's see…**

 **-Common Indian surnames (It's for a character, but the search doesn't tell you that)**

 **-Small towns in Arizona (setting for that same story)**

 **-Holbrook Arizona (see the previous)**

 **-How can the process of rigor mortis be prolonged (I promise it was for writing, not murder or plain, morbid curiosity!)**

 **-Petrified forest national Park (going back to the story setting…)**

 **What would you think if you saw that with no context? Probably just that I've gone crazy (I live in the UK, by the way - I suppose it would make a bit more sense if I actually lived in Arizona)…**

 **Right! Someone asked me whether or not Jason would be in this. He will! He should be showing up next chapter.**

 **Thanks to everyone who has read, reviewed, favourited or followed!**

 **All the best,**

 **~We'reAllABitOdd (apparently this is inclusive of my search history…)**


	4. Chapter 4

When Jason woke up on the bus he didn't remember anything.

All he knew was that there was a pretty Cherokee girl clutching his hand happily, talking to a scrawny, animated boy as another boy, this one much taller, fell onto his shoulder in his sleep.

"Leo," the girl began "Jason's waking up, get Lance up."

"Gladly." he said, pushing the other boy's head off of his shoulder with a grunt of effort. The boy woke up instantly, eyes snapping open. They looked around for a moment as Jason sat up before landing on him.

His eyes narrowed. Much like the other two pairs, they were unfamiliar.

"What?" Jason was groggy and sure it could be heard in his voice "Where am I?"

He didn't get his answer. the other boy who had just woken up leaned forwards, resting his elbows on his knees and letting his arms relax "Who are you?"

The other two looked between them, confused and clearly alarmed.

"Lance, Jason, what do you mean?" The Cherokee girl asked as she tucked thin braid behind her ear to join the rest of her uneven hair. "Jason, you haven't gotten amnesia, have you? lance, yours wasn't meant to be a reoccurring thing, was it?"

"No Piper," said the boy who Jason then realised was called Lance "I remember everything but him - he doesn't seem to remember us either." he turned to Jason "When did you get here?"

"I don't know." he looked around again, taking in a sea of unfamiliar faces amid the unfamiliar scenery "I don't know anything."

Lance winced in animated sympathy "I know what that feels like."

As he spoke, a short man wearing a cap and wielding a baseball bat walked up the aisle in the centre of the bus between the two rows of seats. he looked at Jason with the same look of confusion as lance had but didn't say anything as he walked away again, never moving his eyes.

Jason looked around yet again in a bidding effort to ground himself, it didn't work. As he took in the grime on the window, the dried gum on the back of the seats in front of them and the dull, dry atmosphere around them it became abundant to him he had never been there before and had no idea why these two teenagers were insisting they knew him.

"I'm sorry," he said, gently removing his hand from Piper's "I'm sure you're great people but i don't know who any of you are."

"Great!" Lance exclaimed too brightly "I'm not going crazy then!"

Jason decided, with the settling awkwardness, to change the subject ""Where are we going?"

"The Grand canyon," the scrawny boy sent a look to Lance before whispering conspicuously that the boy hadn't known what it was.

"Why the Grand canyon?"

"It's in the middle of nowhere," the boy shrugged "I reckon it's so we,as a group of delinquents, can't do anything. Look, so apparently you don't know anything any more but I'm Leo and since you don't know anything about me anymore, I am going to make you my best friend again!" he smiled widely but caught Lance out of the corner of his eyes, looking rather upset and put-out at the sudden proclamation.

It seemed to Jason that he was actually the boy's real best friend and Jason suddenly felt bad about showing up, dazed, confused and without knowledge of anything, and taking that from him.

"Where are you two remembering him from?" lance asked as, after about ten more minutes, they piled off of the bus. He had heard them mention this was a school for delinquents but he didn't feel like that was right - he didn't know much but he was sure that was a term not applicable to himself - all the kids looked astoundingly normal. "I've already been robbed of my memories once," he continued as the short man began to approach their little group "it's hard to listen to you guys having memories I don't."

"Come with me." the short man demanded, swinging his bat over his shoulder. Leo and Piper did not get the chance to answer Lance before Jason left them, trailing the cap-wearing man with a very obvious look of confusion on his face. he noticed the man's strange but almost familiar gait as he followed.

As soon as they were out of earshot the man continued.

"Who are you?" He looked very suspicious and Jason could honestly say he didn't blame him.

"I don't know." he admitted "But everyone else claims to."

"Really?"

"Except for one." he clarified.

"Who?"

"Lance?" It was more of a question than an answer. The man's face contorted with confusion. He began to mumble to himself.

Finally, he conceded to his lack of knowledge "Fine," he huffed, sounding unhappy "Go join the rest of them."

He followed Jason as he walked back to Leo, lance and Pier, staring after his blonde head in confusion.

He brought his megaphone to his lips as he stood before the group, looking as intimidated as one of his short stature could "Right," he began as the megaphone mooed.

The group fell apart in fits of giggles as Leo hit his three companions on the shoulder.

"You didn't?" lance asked through laughter, instantly connecting the dots and realising what Leo was trying to communicate.

The man with the megaphone tried again, this time it distorted his voice.

"Yep!" Leo popped the 'p' "I screwed with Coach. hedge's megaphone!"

"That's such an unnecessary waste of time," Lance commented, beaming "I love it!"

"You know," Leo began. looking devious "I still haven't gotten you back for that little thing you pulled on the roof." It was more of a promise than a statement.

Lace feigned innocence "What thing did I pull. I didn't pull anything."

"Tell that to the bump on my head!" He yelled playfully, jabbing wildly at the side of his head.

"There isn't one, it was months ago!"

"Aha! So you admit to it!"

"Dammit Valdez!"

"Sucks to be you..." he had nothing to say in response "We should really just give you a substitute surname."

"No way." Lance shook his head slowly and deliberately.

"You two," Piper hit them gently on the back of their heads "the group's moving." And so they were.

The four of them broke into a jog and joined the back of the group before they entered the premises. By some misfortune, piper was caught up holding the door with a boy she, lance and Leo all despised and Jason decided he didn't like the look of instantly. Something felt wildly off about him.

Piper really didn't look happy but she joined them as they were tailing he group, a slight hint of a smile reappearing on her face only to fad as the boy joined her, putting a hand on her shoulder and grinning sickeningly.

"Go away Dillon." All three of the friends who knew about him chorused, all looking very fed up, as Piper broke her way free and walked through the door after her friends, slamming it on Dillon for good measure.

He exclaimed in surprised outrage, throwing his hands up in a gesture that could have been bred from surprise, exasperation or a threatening anger. He slammed the door, storming through it as the four attempted to scuttle as far to the front of the group, as near to their authority figure, as possible.

later, they were standing in a huddle on the crowded walkway, holding flimsy paper worksheets printed in monochrome, and pencils. Lance had backed up as soon as they had been passed out with the accompanying instructions to pair up.

"I'm out," He said, arms held up in mock surrender "I know nothing!" the coach had sighed as he passed him, not handing him sheet as he mumbled in malcontent.

"Special situations, Lance," he didn't look all too happy about not having a surname to refer to him by "Don't think you're getting away with anything.

Lance had grinned widely when he had left "Fight among yourselves," he said mockingly "Decide who gets left out," He sent a look at Jason that suggested it should be him. Jason agreed. "I'll be over here, enjoying the view."

He stepped closer to the edge, looking down at the massive depth of the canyon beneath the glass walkway. He didn't feel the unease or wonderment he could tell his peers did, instead, he felt that this was right, that he was perhaps a bit too at home in such a potentially dangerous situation.

Piper ended up being partnered with Dillon. She was not happy.

But, when, all of a sudden, a storm picked up and the walkway began to quake, and the group leader and coach gathered the class back into the safety of a secure building and solid ground, she had bigger problems.

Or at least she thought so until the door slammed closed and, suddenly, her and her three friends were trapped outside - it wouldn't open! - facing Dillon who was smiling sadistically.

Then, suddenly, he wasn't Dillon.

"He's a Venti!" Jason exclaimed, not sure how he knew that or entirely what it meant, only that it was right "Run!" he fished a heavy golden coin from his pocket, not sure what to do with it but well aware it was important.

Lance glanced around "Where to?" he sounded perhaps less frantic than he should have, it was odd "Do you suggest we dive over the edge of this walkway I am beginning to trust less and less each second I see this weird storm kid take a hit at us?"

"If you have time to be sarcastic, you have time to help me think of a better idea!"

"What's a good idea here!?"

"We can figure that out in a moment!"

"That's a perfect example of what isn't a good idea!"

They were yelling at the top of their lungs, over the roaring of the wind created by the boy that had suddenly become a raging monster rather than a human. It was odd to both amnesiac boys to know the other was unaffected and that they, themselves, were too, without explanation.

As Jason gripped his coin in his hand, he noticed Lance evading the monster as much as he could, joining Leo and Piper as they panicked. He didn't reach in time. The storm monster saw where he was going and what he was trying to do and decided not to let him do it. A strong gust of wind sent Piper, as she stood cowering dangerously close to the edge of the walkway, tumbling over the edge. She fell, with a series of quivering, piercing screams that hurt to hear, down into the abyss below.

A second too late, lance got there and fell to his knees beside Leo, watching helplessly as she dropped down beyond any point they could even hope to reach. Jason looked behind him as he heard the screaming and the desperate yelling of the girl's name. he didn't thin twice before charging over and diving over the edge of the walkway himself, angling himself headfirst and streamlining himself so he fell faster than she did.

Then he had to put faith into his ability to save them both as the yelling of Leo and Lance grew less distinct with each second passing with each second they fell until, underneath the raging noise of the wind whipping violently past his ears in a cool blast, they disappeared entirely.

Jason was worried about how much faith he had in himself. It really made almost no sense as to why he would believe the laws of physics didn't apply to him. He had trusted himself to save them both but ow he was beginning to to lose his trust in his sanity.

Piper couldn't see, her eyes were stinging as the rain lashed at them, watering intensely. her nose was running too and her voice had become hoarse. She could have sworn, as she went plummeting down to the ground, she heard Jason yelling after her.

What was he doing?

But then a strong arm clasped around her waist and she was suddenly slowing, worryingly close to the bottom of the canyon and convinced she was doomed to certain death.


	5. Chapter 5

The flying chariot clattered down right by them with a clang.

Beneath the baby blue sky, blinding bright sun, and cigarette-smoke wisps of cloud the flying vehicle, drawn by winged horses, was pretty hard to miss.

In fact, had it not been for the vicious storm spirit, the _Venti,_ it was unanimously and wordlessly decided between lance, Leo, piper, and Jason that they would have noticed the hardly subtle method of transport much sooner.

It just so happened that they were not s fortunate and piper was still shaking, Jason just beyond confused, Leo not sure whether to think the situation was disastrous and terrifying or just plain incredible, and Lance still confused about pretty much everything - he didn't know a thing about his life but was sure this was not a piece of it. But he _did_ know, regardless, that this probably _didn't_ exceed the barriers for strange he had set up for his life, whatever that was.

It turned out, the chariot that decided the laws of physics were beneath it was being driven by two teenagers who were perhaps just as bewildering as their vehicle.

The first was, they realised after hesitantly and dazedly piling in with them when instructed to do so, a towering boy, beyond buff, with a hard face and a name to match: Butch. But then there was the juxtaposing personality - _and was that a tattoo of a rainbow?_ Lance felt like he was swimming in a world of in between, like everyone here fit the archetypes of the people he was semi-familiar with only when there was something to bring the blurred, hazy memories he had out of their locked-up boxes momentarily.

Then there was the girl, grizzled and hardened and somewhat desperate, pretty but intimidating, eyes as torn by war as ones, again, Lance was _sure_ he was familiar again. She looked sad and, as previously mentioned, desperate, like she was looking for something and had gotten to the point where she had become tired and irritated with the unrelenting search.

That desperation and frustration had only increased when she saw Jason. He had lost a shoe at some point in the battle and she had stared down in disdain and disappointment. Staring down at his shoeless, dirtied, once-white sock, Jason failed to see what was wrong.

She had fallen back heavily with a displeased exhale accompanied by a grunt.

They had asked Butch (or Leo had), as they sat with him and the grey-eyed girl who was stewing in her own silence, why she was acting in such a way, still weirded out by the fight with the nonhuman being.

It had been is turn to sigh "look," He spoke softly in a voice that didn't fit his visage "She's been having a hard time lately - her boyfriend is missing and she was told that the boy with one shoe would be her answer."

It began, right then, to make a lot of sense as to why she had been unable to mask her frustration.

The chariot clattered downwards as the sky melted from baby blue to a darker shade, as the burning sun dulled and the wisps of cloud thinned in places and thickened in others. They dropped in a controlled manner, trusting Butch at the reins to guide them towards the overgrown, luscious, slightly dewy grass below.

But then it went out of control, moving this way and that as it soared forwards and went plunging into the lake. They were soaked, suddenly, with the cool water, surrounded by teenagers and canoes who had dived out of the way in haste.

A group of campers rushed to their aid with towels ready but paused for a minute as the saw the warm orange glow emitting from above leo's head.

"What?" he asked with a raised eyebrow "Why is everyone staring at me?"

Lance lifted an eyebrow of his own, jabbing his finger upwards in a very obvious gesture as he stared there himself. Suddenly leo went slightly crazy, feeling as though he were ablaze, ducking his entire head beneath the coolness of the clear water, accomplishing nothing but soaking his hair as well as the rest of him. Persistently, the glowing symbol continued to hover above his head, bobbing and dipping as it gradually grew dimmer.

"Vulcan." Jason mumbled when he saw the symbol.

"What?" Leo yelled in his rushed, comedic action "I don't even like Star Trek!"

"He means the god." Annabeth told them from the shore where all but leo now sat, wrapped in towels with droplets of water dripping from the darkened-with-moisture ends of her hair. "We use the Greek names," She sent a look at jason the boy could not quite decipher and was not sure if he wanted to "So Hephaestus."

After that was cleared up they took a moment to admire the environment in which they had found themselves.

It was like another world, green and lively, a clear, glimmering lake over to one side, a climbing wall to the other - _was that lava? -_ and a ring of more distinctly themed cabins than Leo cared to count. There were teenagers running around, some casually in jeans and obnoxiously bright orange t-shirts and tank tops, doing pretty normal camp stuff like wandering around in clusters of friends, playing basketball and volleyball, most likely with a disregard to the official rules, shooting bows and arrows in archery ranges, climbing up the rock wall, or swimming or canoeing in the lake. But then there were the abnormalities: the kids wearing battle armour and wielding swords that they slashed at one another without hesitation, a few holding guns that they shot almost expertly at a line of targets, a group of younger children crowding around a teenager, chorusing things in a language Leo, Piper, lance and Jason were unfamiliar with but all but the last of them seemed to be able to understand, there were a few walking in and out of a building, carrying bundles of bandages and other such things in their arms.

From the top of the tall, green hill they stared down they stared down at the camp in awe.

Off in the distance, in the direction in which Annabeth was leading them, seeming a bit brighter, there was a big, blue-painted house.

On the porch there were two men playing a game, pinochle, they had said. One was a kindly older man in a wheelchair, the type of man that looked like the friendly teacher you would look forward to having a lesson with. The other was less friendly looking, with eyes of a deep purple that were both captivating and terrified, a beer belly hidden beneath an awfully loud leopard print shirt, and unkempt, greying dark hair that stood out from his head in frizzy clumps that almost looked as though they had never been brushed down. To his side, there was a can of diet coke he drank from periodically with a look that almost seemed to be contempt pasted across his features.

"Annabeth," the first one smiled, looking up from his cards "Have you got the new demigods? Good, good, follow me in." He rolled his wheelchair over the porch and through the door, into the building that was much cooler than the humidity of the air outside. The other man followed reluctantly at the tail of the group, grumbling from over Lance's shoulder and making him feel slightly uneasy. The man seemed to realise that.

They stopped in a room with the head of a leopard mounted upon the wall. The kind man began to speak again, introducing himself and his companion "I'm Chiron," He told them, the name ringing a bell to all but Lance "And this is Dionysus." he gestured to the man behind Lance whose attention had since been devoted entirely to the leopard head.

Leo stared between the two as though one had suddenly sprouted an extra head and the other's head had been replaced with the leopard's "Like the God." He deadpanned.

"Yes mortal," he was just as fed up in voice as he was in expression "Like the god," His eyes blazed as he stared Leo down.

"And Chiron," Jason picked up where Leo, too scared under the blazing gaze of the god to do so himself "Like the trainer of heroes."

He took the declaration in a much calmer, more open and welcoming way "Yes. And would you, by any chance, happen to know where you fit into this?"

Three of them froze as Jason's head span. They were sure, Lance, Leo, and Piper, that whatever possible explanations they could come up with (not that lance, clueless as he was, really had any at all that would make any sort of sense in the real world outside of the wanderings of his mind) were too utterly ridiculous for them to dare to say them aloud.

Annabeth sighed. "What happened," she shook her head, the soft curls in her hair shifting around her head "What happened to the promise to have them all claimed by thirteen?" She sounded angry and was clearly directing her anger towards the god.

"Relax mortal," he sounded so nonchalant it was insulting, even to Lance, leo and piper in their dazed state of confusion and Jason through the spinning of his head.

"I will not!" she was understandably defiant. Dionysus just tutted. She sighed again, Piper had the feeling she had done a lot of that recently "Well, come with me - we'll show you the initiation video; I'm sure _, because the God's can't stick to their promises_ ," the last part of the sentence was nothing if not accusatory "That you're pretty confused."

"Wait," Chiron instructed as they began to follow her on legs that were still shaking slightly "I would like to continue speaking to you, my boy." So Jason stayed behind as the world began to spin faster, melting into a whirlpool of colour that suddenly fell out of discernibility before falling back into it, completely and unnaturally still.

Within the image before him there was something that had not been here before. There was a woman standing saliently before him. She was cloaked in goat skin, tall and proud and with an air of importance that made him aware of what he should probably be doing at that moment. He dropped to his knees respectfully.

"Rise demigod." she commanded. The title did not feel odd to him as it probably should have, it came with a sense of familiarity that did not make him pause for a single second. "We do not have much time," she continued,speaking quickly as, just for a second, her image faltered "My cage grows stronger."

"You're imprisoned," he confirmed "But are we to help?"

"Of course! If you do not help me before time is too scarce for action, you shall not help yourself!"

"What?" he felt chills tracing the length of his spine.

"You wish for your memories to return?" her image fazed and fizzled down to nothing more than a wisp of colour, tan skin and dark eyes and hair, grey goat skin and white clothes.

Then, in another dizzying loop, reality resumed from exactly where he had left it. Chiron paused in his actions, looking at Jason with worry as the boy's skin was plunged suddenly into a sickly pallor of white.

"What is it?" The concerned man asked.

And so Jason explained everything. Chiron listened and did not criticise or doubt a word that left his scarred lips.

"The goatskin?" He asked "Juno, perhaps?"

"Perhaps."

"We shall talk for a while longer, but I believe it would be in your best interest to take up an inquiry with Clovis."

"Clovis?"  
"A son of Hypnos," he clarified "I believe he may be of help in terms of your memory."

"Annabeth mentioned something about being claimed by thirteen?" Jason switched the topic.

"A promise," he confirmed "made by the gods to her boyfriend, percy jackson, after the war."

"The missing one."

"Yes." he sounded regretful. "But you have already been claimed, have you not?"

Jason hesitated "Yes, Jupiter."

"Zeus." Chiron told him "We use the Greek names."

"So Annabeth said."

"I'm curious as to why you are so inclined to the use of the Roman names?"

Jason closed his eyes lightly as he shook his head "I know about as much as you do."

Piper, leo, and Lance had been left alone in a room for a while, one wall of which was decorated with a cork board which was, in turn, adorned by a series of polaroids of children of different ages, all wearing the same shirts, some pictures so old they were printed in black and white rather than colour. In a few of these pictures, there was a girl of astounding familiarity, a boy with ginger hair, acne and a weak goatee in a few of them with her, a boy with tan skin, ebony hair, sea green eyes, and an ever-increasing number of scars in each of them. The latest picture was of Annabeth and the latter boy, arms wrapped around each other, smiling through blood, cuts, plasters, bruises, and bandages, like none of them mattered.

Piper knew, looking at them, that this boy was the Percy jackson she had spent the day hearing about, from Annabeth, the other kids she walked past, even the initiation video. She was surprised, honestly, that he was not more impressive in appearance. She had been expecting something different, someone who looked less like a trouble skater, a skater boy, someone a bit more like Jason who was nowhere near as lean, whose features were more heroic and less boyish, who looked more well kept, who looked more intelligent.

Piper had had more than enough trouble in her life.

She had been told, both her and Lance, that they would probably be claimed, the comedic thing that had happened to Leo upon their less-than-ideal upon arrival, at the campfire tht evening.

That turned out to be the case.

Piper had, as she sat before the warmth of the fire that blazed a colour it should not have, been transformed all of a sudden into someone whom she was not.

At the same time, lance himself had seen a glow. Slowly and uncertainly, he looked upwards, shoulders braced to his ears and expression clearly showing his complete state of confusion and disease.

 **A/N**

 **And what do we think shall happen at the beginning of next chapter?**

 **I'd like to clarify quickly that I've been writing this chapter from my memory of The Lost Hero so it's almost definitely going to stray somewhat from canon.**

 **I'd like to thank everyone quickly, for reading, reviewing, following and favouriting. I hope you enjoy the chapter.**


	6. Chapter 6

Lance looked across the unnatural colour of the blaze of the fire, over to Piper who stood there, miffed, face decorated with makeup she was attempting to scrape off to no avail and clothed in an ornate chiton, before braving to look up, eyes wide and face bathed in a glowing blue.

There, floating a few centimetres above that one little stalk in his hair that never quite sat flat, was a symbol, a decorative trident that moved slowly, losing colour at the same pace. His jaw dropped and the dark blue of his eyes glazed over. A collective gasp rose from a sea of faces, each different in features but, suddenly, remarkably similar in expression, as Jason looked past him, over to Piper as one other girl prioritised her over lance who was somewhat lost.

"No!" The nameless girl explained, pretty features contorting, twisting in a way that made her much less attractive "No way! You are not my sister!"

Piper was making a face herself, one that suggested to Lance, a fact he accepted with a snort of laughter that drew much more attention to the other new camper who had just been claimed as the blue fizzled away entirely, that she was also unhappy with the situation. "I guess so…" She said begrudgingly.

"No! Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty, look at her and tell me she's my sister!" the other girl was in hysterics.

Jason looked at piper, mockingly pretending to be examining the composition of her features. He may not have known her, even if she remembered them being in a relationship and knew rather too much about him for him to be able to deny her claims without a slight pang in the side of his head and stomach. "I see beauty there." he told her confidently, not allowing his speech to falter even as his cheeks flushed crimson.

She huffed and turned her head, a wave of ebony curls spinning with her as she ignored him dutifully.

Across the campfire, from where he overlooked the goings on, Chiron cleared his throat purposefully. His eyes scanned the crowd, stopping upon the two newest demigods to be claimed, as a smile graced his aged face.

He introduced the two, formally and traditionally, by their titles at that moment.

"Piper Mclean, daughter of Aphrodite," Piper subtly kept her breath held, distracted momentarily from the unfamiliar unpleasant weight of the makeup her claiming had bestowed upon her, as she prayed to every god she could think of no one would make the connection between her and her father. No one did.

"And Lance, son of Poseidon." Chiron continued, watching as Lance sheepishly scanned the crowd, every face he saw confused, wondering about the lack of family name attached to the title that made even him, suddenly reminded of his unfortunate situation, somewhat uncomfortable.

After a moment of palpable silence, someone finally gave in to the urge to break it, initiating a wave of unsure clapping that not one person did not halfheartedly join in on.

That night, Leo spent the night in the cabin of his father, warm and cosy, comfortable and comfortably occupied with a fair number of kids, the youngest being Harley who had not stopped smiling. The air smelled distinctly of metal, not that Leo minded it at all. He was, however, plunged into a captivating mess of thoughts - thoughts of his mother, more specifically when she had _ceased to be his mother._

Piper had been required to spend her life in a less pleasant environment, in a cabin decorated in various shades of pink that began to claw at her eyes, stinking of perfume and cologne that tickled the inside of her nose and clawed insistently at the inside of her throat. Drew, the girl who had quickly made her disapproval of Piper obvious, turned out to be her head camper and was abusing the power, making a nice boy, Michael, she recalled, pick up the contents of the bin that had been tipped across the floor, screeching like the banshees Piper hoped did not exist.

Though Jason and Lance were both convinced they would have her beat.

The Zeus cabin was occupied primarily by a giant statue formed in the visage of his father. It seemed to be watching the entirety of the cabin, stern facial features, etched in hard stone that could have been constructed of cloud and been no less terrifying, making him feel as though he would rather be almost anywhere else.

The cabin was cold, and, aside from the statue, empty. At least until he found the nook in the all that gave way to a cot, Polaroids on the wall, tacked up haphazardly, faded but far too familiar not to stir up a storm of recognition in his clouded consciousness. He slept there, alone in a room that felt as far from home as anything could, missing comfort, missing companionship, missing much of himself.

Lance was missing just as much.

He had been escorted to the long, low-walled cabin by Annabeth whose eyes had glazed over, face unreadable. This had been her boyfriend's cabin and he couldn't help but feel as though he was intruding upon a place in which he was not meant to be.

She hadn't said a word but, as he walked across the hard floors, footsteps echoing, barely audible over the rush of the fountain in the corner, he saw one of the eds unmade, the surrounding floor littered by signs of life.

He steered as clear of it as he could.

He knew, as he perched on the end of one of the other beds in the room, eyes perusing every crevice of the room that sent unpleasant tingles up the length of his spine, that the space he was observing was the living space of the missing Percy Jackson he had heard of.

He couldn't sleep that night. The running water he would usually have loved filled his ears like a raucous chorus of poorly played drums. The lack of people in the room made im uncomfortable, beyond his understanding. He looked over at the empty beds with heavy eyes that wanted to sleep but were not allowed to, feeling like it was something he was much unused to.

The next morning, he escaped the confines of that cabin as soon as he could, thankful to be able to breathe the fresh air of the chilly morning. He was aware that was a very strange thing for him - he like to sleep for as long as possible. He laid on the small stretch of beach, back in the sand, sun moving laboriously over the muted blue of the sky. This - the crashing of the waves on the sand, lapping over his outstretched feet, the whistle of the wind in his ears, the all of the birds above, the noise of people a short distance away, going about miscellaneous tasks - was so comfortably familiar he had to smile.

Leo had been looking for Lance that morning and found him on the beach. He had dragged him to breakfast soon after, cloaked in sand and feet soaked.

"How's the beach?" Leo asked as they walked across the luscious grass that carpeted the camp.

"Good," lance answered "Not as good as Varadero, though." he continued casually, not noticing anything until he realised leo had stopped and was looking at him through widened eyes, face positively glowing.

"Varadero!" he repeated excitedly.

Lace stopped and looked at him, head tilted "Yeah?" he didn't understand, but then he did.

"Oh my god! Varadero! Where's Varadero?"

Leo shook his head as he pondered "I don't know - Annabeth seems to know a lot - she might."

Lance wasn't going to admit he was sure Annabeth didn't like him; he was meant to convince people _he_ was convinced everyone liked him until they had literally tried to kill him. So he went along with Leo's disagreeable plan.

Annabeth had looked up from her book, eyebrows pulled together as she thought "Varadero, Varadero, Varadero," She repeated the word until the boy next to her piped up:

"Varadero, a beach resort town on the narrow Hicacos peninsula of Cuba. Why do you ask?"

"Malcolm!" Annabeth exclaimed "Of course,"

Lance's eyes lit up "Cuba," he mumbled.

Leo responded for him, looking over at him and receiving a careless nod of approval to tell the story, that was lacking a sizeable portion of itself he was sure the children of Athena would hate not knowing, was okay to tell.

"Did you guys get the news of Miracle Boy here?" he asked. They nodded after a moment.

"You aren't telling me…?" Malcolm trailed off, grey eyes trailing over lance who was still mumbling happily to himself.

"Yup." Leo told him.

"Why Varadero?" Annabeth asked.

"I asked him about the beach and he mentioned it offhandedly - I suppose he went there frequently enough for that to stick with him?"

"Cuba," lance repeated, directing it to Leo rather than the ground this time "I'm from Cuba."

Annabeth had, thankfully, become less opposed to Lance that morning than she had been the night before.

"We need to get you two weapons," She told him and piper as the three walked hurriedly towards and old shed "This is the Athena weapons tore but the Aphrodite one isn't the best," piper sighed, grateful for the fact the makeup had faded "And I'm not even sure if we can access the Poseidon one at present."

She pulled open the old door, revealing a cluster of weapons that filled the area that seemed much bigger from the inside than the outside. Upon her gesture, Piper and lance entered the area, looking around. Piper hefted a machine gun curiously but quickly put it back.

"Not your style, huh? Guns are pretty flashy." Annabeth said as Piper continued to search, having lost sight of Lance a moment ago.

Then something caught her eye. There was a short blade, a dagger, sitting in the corner, dusty and isolated but, for whatever reason, completely enrapturing. She reached forwards and picked it up between her thumb and forefinger, hesitant to touch the ornate sheath too much as the fascinating weapon was not yet hers.

She pulled off the sheath; the bronze blade almost shone beneath. She could see her reflection in it, the coco-colour of her hair and the brightness of the feathers twisted into a few of the random, uneven braids among it.

Then Lance emerged, eyes glistening just as much as they had when he had discovered his own place of origin, a somewhat bulky rifle held so familiarly yet so casually in his hands that it actually made Piper somewhat nervous to see.

Annabeth eyed the weapon "A rifle?" She confirmed as she looked over at piper's glimmering blade "You know how to shoot?"

Piper was hoping he would say no.

But he nodded. "Yeah, I'm sure of it." he looked over at Piper "Only, I don't know why."

Annabeth sighed "I suppose that's to be expected."

They walked out, Annabeth locking the shed back up behind their retreating backs.

"We'll get you two to training with those later - don't worry, they won't hurt mortals, just be careful around demigods."

Lance had shocked everyone at the range that afternoon when he had proved his skill with the weapon. Piper, having finished her own training session before his began, was watching as he stood in his section of the range, sight raised to his eye as he closed the other.

His left hand acted as a shelf as his right rested over the area in which the trigger was located. Through the aiming-circle in the centre of the sight, he could see the centre of the target however far away it was. He pulled back the bolt and breathed once, deeply, to check his position. Sure enough, after the rifle raised with his breath, it lowered steadily back down to the same area.

He pulled the trigger back with his index finger, holding it back as the bullet went firing forwards, releasing itself from the rifled barrel, flying at high speeds through the air, before piercing through the centre of the target where he had aimed for it to go.

Piper gasped as he pulled back the bolt again, breathed and released.

The bullet went back through the same hole.

He emptied the entire magazine into that target before lowering the weapon and turning to face Piper, smiling widely.

"You know, Sharpshooter," She grinned "I don't think whatever life you had before was all that normal either." She laughed.

He laughed back "I feel like you might be right," he observed his work keenly "Sharpshooter?" It felt as familiar in the weapon he held, like it fit neatly into the thousand piece puzzle of which he felt he owned a mere five pieces.

"Sharpshooter." She confirmed with another smile and a wave of her hand towards the target

 **A/N**

 **Am I diverging from the canon a bit? Yep.**

 **Sorry for not uploading last week, by the way, I just couldn't get wording that I liked. It just didn't happen.**

 **I hope this is okay, I'm not against it so I hope it reads okay to people who are not me and were not in my head as I wrote this, knowing exactly what I meant by every word.**

 **~We'reAllABitOdd**


	7. Chapter 7

They had to play capture the flag that night.

The camp was split in half, under the so-called-rule of either Ares or Athena, being the offspring of the war-based gods. Thankfully, Leo, Piper, Lance, and Jason all found themselves under the command of Athen, no matter how much Ares complained.

The one doing the most complaining was the Ares head camper, a large girl who appeared to have torn the sleeves roughly from her CHB t-shirt and tied a bandana around her head, purely to procrastinate on having to make an effort to tame the mousy strings of her hair that fell out of their haphazardly assigned places.

"Why do you get both the big three kids on your side?" She asked, large hands balled into fists that rested at the waist of her cargo shorts.

"Why not?" Annabeth had responded, not looking up from the dagger she was polishing until she deemed it done and moved to collect the cap from where it sat next to her.

"Why not? Why not? I'll tell you why - it's unfair, Chase!"

"All's fair in love and war Clarisse. Besides, you didn't want love," he gestured to the Aphrodite campers, Piper aside, ho stood in a circle, gossiping and chatting "So we just got a bit of a boost."

Clarisse began to fume, until she was approached by a boy, a Hermes camper, who calmed her with soothing words in a way no one else could manage.

As soon as she left, Annabeth could not stop herself from smiling; there was no disadvantage to numbers, and Aphrodite did have good fighters, even if there were things they would rather be doing. This would be too easy - especially with Poseidon and Zeus on her side, she had seen what they could do before, even if they had no grasp on their powers prior.

"Ready?" She walked over to the group of new campers who were all talking amongst themselves.

"S'pose." Was the general response that arose from amongst them.

Annabeth's eyes lasted on the gun that laid to rest in Lance's arms.

"Guns are good practically," She told him, receiving a nod of agreement "But they perhaps aren't the best in recreation - keep your aim decent: maiming is strictly against the rules." She walked away and Piper painfully observed that the shirt she wore was much too large for her, hanging almost to her knees.

Over the course of capture the flag, Leo had managed to find something aside from a flag: a workshop. It looked as though it had been out of commission for a fairly long time, neither it nor the surrounding area looking the most kempt.

But that wasn't all. There was a dragon, one made of interlocking bronze scales, that moved around in ways that clearly showed it was on its last legs. It breathed fire, too, and had breathed it all over Leo.

Everyone had held their breath and looked away. But he wasn't hurt, just annoyed he was left standing there in his boxers and very little else.

The great metal dragon allowed him to near it.

He had it fixed before too long, up and running as it should have been.

But there was a name tied to the dragon, _Charles Beckendorf._ It was a name that made conversations darker, it was a name that settled over groups of people like dark clouds, it was a name that had genuinely made demigods he would have thought were fearless, cry. It was the name of his late half brother.

He had died in the war, at the beginning of it, on a short quest with Percy Jackson, and there was _that_ name again, the other would not have gotten out of either, had he not been Lance's half brother.

They said, after his death, cabin 9, the cabin of Hephaestus, had been cursed. Nothing of theirs was working as it should, even if there was no fault in the workmanship. The haywire inventions, were violent, the number of forge injuries had increased at such a rapid rate that the children of Apollo those who worked in the infirmary, were beginning to complain about the significant increase of work they were required to do.

But Percy Jackson's wasn't the only name tied to Charles'. The second was said with just as much hushed hesitation and remorse as the name Leo had originally been pondering. The next was, by some odd fluke, Piper's late sister. Silena Beauregard, the daughter of Aphrodite, the head counsellor of the cabin up until her death, the girl who had led the Ares cabin to the war when they refused, protesting about the flying chariot they believed to be rightly theirs, stubborn to the point of abandonment until they believed their counsellor was leading them to fight. Silena Beauregard who had made it possible for the gods to beat the titans. SIlena Beauregard, the traitor no one dared call such, no one dared to even think of her like that.

She was the daughter of APhrodite, the boyfriend of Charles Beckendorf, a hero in her own right, ties to Kronos or no.

But, that said, the Hephaestus cabin were far from alone in their misfortune; very little was going as planned in Camp half Blood.

Piper was haunted by a dream, a dream of her father when she had last seen him, a dream that melted from the image of her father into that of a mountain, that of a giant of fire.

Then there was the prophecy, a less-than-pleasant premonition passed through the lips of Rachel Elizabeth Dare, their local oracle.

" _Child of Lightning, beware the earth,_

 _The giants' revenge the eight shall birth,_

 _The forge, dove and wave shall break the cage,_

 _And death unleash through Hera's rage,"_

The voice in which the prophecy was told was not that of the kind, artsy mortal, rather that of the ancient oracle who spoke only in cryptic messages, voice easily comparable to a pained gasp for air.

Before she had spoken, Rachel's eyes had lit up green, too bright to be any modicum of natural, her hair flailing behind her, a cloud of red that was much alike to fire, as wisps of green surrounded her, like something straight from a fantasy story. Then, after she had shared her message, she had collapsed, back into the arms of some campers who had clearly rehearsed the routine.

Then, around the campfire that had so quickly changed in colour, they all sat, trying to decipher the prophecy. They were aware of the haste they had to make, of the tight deadline that would only hold until the WInter solstice, four days later.

"Child of lightning," Annabeth speculated "Obviously Jason." She tapped her fingers on her chin "I have to say, I don't know about the eight, just yet…" The tapping sped up rapidly " _The forge the dove and the wave,_ children of Hephaestus, Aphrodite, and Poseidon." She looked over to Jason "I suppose, as the quest leader, you are to chose who accompanies you."

"Leo?" He asked without hesitation.

The other responded in the same manner.  
"Lance?" He continued.

Lance scoffed back "Like there was literally anyone else here who you could have picked," but he did not protest at having to go.

Jason was about to speak again but was cut off abruptly.

"Me!" the voice was eager and too girlish, and Jason hated it right away "I'm the head counsellor," it protested shrilly "I should go-"

"Piper?" Jason spook simply over her. She stopped, looking mortified and staring at Piper as though she were dancing on her grandmother's grave.

"What? Why her - she doesn't even know what love is? You want her to be your dove?"

"Yes."

That led to them meeting up early the following morning, greeted by the fantastic sight of a newly fixed-up bronze dragon waiting atop Halfblood hill. Leo was, of course, there with it.

"This is Festus," he said, gesturing up at the large, mechanic beast.

Jason didn't know whether to laugh or leave, exasperated "Festus means happy in Latin - you're telling us we're going to be riding around on happy the dragon?"

Leo was unperturbed "Yep."

He then proceeded to speak to festus as though he were human, interpreting his whirs, clicks and creaks as some sort of language that far bypassed anyone else's understanding.

"Leo," Piper said with a joking headshake "Why are you talking to the robot?"

Lance's heart jumped a bit as he watched, an image of a big, blue lion popped into his mind with more clarity than anything he had seen before. However, he quickly dismissed it; it was a ridiculous image he was sure meant nothing.

"Nah," He told Piper "It's pretty normal,"

"It's really not," She patted his arm in a mocking form of condescending comfort meant for no purpose but as a joke "Your definition of normal is just warped."

He just shrugged off her hand with a smile and short laugh.

"Alright," Leo called "Everybody on!"

They sat, one behind the other, on the back of the bronze dragon, waiting for it to fly. It did with little delay, making Piper squeal and clutch her fists around jason's shirt as he sat before her.

She wondered how she was the only one scared, playing with reasoning in her mind, contemplating in an attempt to calm herself.

 _Jason can control the wind, he isn't in danger._ She thought. _This is Leo's effort, it would make sense that he trusts it. But Lance?_

"You don't know what normal means." She murmured.

Lance heard Piper speaking in front of him and resigned himself to admitting she was right.

"You don't know the half of it,"

She giggled, much calmer now, as they had stopped rising and were simply gliding over the cool swells of the fairly thin, damp air, far above the world she so often passed over "Neither do you!"

"I never claimed to."

A fair stretch of time in silence, interrupted by the wail of the wind, the occasional twittering of birds and the more common whistle of the breeze passing through gaps left in the thicker treetops, between dark green leaves.

Then Leo spoke, voicing a question he had been harbouring for a while but always seemed to forget to ask.

"Hey?" he received three hums, each a wildly different pitch, as a notifier of their listening "Do you remember how you lose your memory?"

"Somewhat." Lance told him "I didn't have much of a clue when I woke up, about anything, but it felt like my head was about to explode, so that was a pretty good tip-off that it was some sort of head trauma. I definitely know now, though - Miracle boy, meteor boy, y'know?" he lifted his hands from the shiny bronze of festus where they rested, raising them to the space in the air besides him, at which time he used them to create air quotes around the names given to him by the media.

"Yeah, I know."

"I haven't got clue," Jason told him.

"None? Piper checked.

He nodded as he rolled his golden coin around in his hand "Not a one." He dropped the coin into his pocket, gently leaning back one hand behind him and smiling when he felt piper's fingers trail over his unsurely - he may not have known her, not really, but there was a sort of comfort there.

"But I intend to find out."


	8. Chapter 8

The air around them grew colder and colder still the longer they remained in flight, the further North they travelled. The clouds had thickened and were continuing to do so exponentially, the sun growing dimmer through the filter they provided.

"Where are we headed again?" Lance asked as he reached up to push a few strands of hair back from his eyes.

Jason sighed as he sent a glance over his shoulder, past Piper.

"Quebec." he said simply "We need to speak to Boreas, the God of the North wind."

"And how far are we, Leo?"

"About an hour away," Leo called over the roar of the wind that had picked up suddenly around them.

They landed, true to Leo's words, about an hour after his statement.

The place where they landed as somewhat alike to a penthouse, more than somewhat, in fact, at which they were met by two male figures.

One was tall, eyes as dark as the midnight sky, hair the colour of the snow they could see when looking about themselves, shoulders broad enough to be about two Jason's across. All in all, he was roughly the size of an ox, a great hulking figure with a vacant expression and a multitude of empty spaces in his mouth where teeth should have been, as though he had participated in a few too many fights and his teeth had fallen victim to many of them.

He was dressed as though he were ready to play hockey, thick sweatpants covering his legs, baggy as though they were a size or two too big, a red jersey on his torso. From his back there sprouted a pair of wings, purple in colour.

One of his large hands rested over the hilt of the sword sheathed to his side, it was bronze and jagged, as though you would merely have to touch it with the slightest degree of pressure for it to pierce your skin, almost as though it were mimicking the appearance of an icicle

The other was much different.

Leo took in his appearance with something like amusement.

"He looks like a love god from one of my mum's 80's rock album covers." he commented to Lance who made some sort of choking noise in the back of his throat as he attempted to hold back a laugh.

Leo could remember himself and Piper informing Lance about pop culture and the strange bits of recent history he seemed to have not heard of in anywhere near the depth they knew of. He was somewhat oddly proud at how well that had gone. He remembered the first time he told Lance about the messed up fashion of the eighties and Lance had paused before his expression went blank and his eyes glazed over. Leo had rushed over, knowing there was some hint of a memory resurfacing, but had then fallen into a fit of giggles when his face returned to normal and he had merely muttered, somewhat absently, that one of his friends had a mullet, but was still somewhat upset by the fact he simply could not call the friend's face to his memory.

Lance did have to agree Leo was right.

He was a wiry teenager, pretty unimpressive in all honestly. He had a bad case of acne, his shirt undone for too many buttons.

His hair was the same colour as the other figure's who could be assumed to be his brother, his sword made of the same bronze most demigod weapons they had seen at Camp Halfblood.

His eyes, however, much more intelligent than his brother's, were fixated on a squirming Piper whose eyes would not look back at his properly.

The four of them dismounted from Festus' back, at which point they were greeted by the two.

"I am Zethes," The second began "This is my brother Calais-"

"Cal!" The other interrupted like an echo, the words from his mouth distorted somewhat by the gap left by his missing teeth.

Zethes sighed as he continued "We must ask you to turn back."

Lance looked at him through narrowed eyes as Piper's eyes finally met Zethes.

She spoke in a soft voice that made everyone in her presence listen to her intensely.

"You will allow us entry," She said defiantly, voice slow as she made sure to emphasise and clarify each word to an extent most would not bother to do in conversational speech or speech of any kind.

The eyes of both Zethes and Calais clouded over as the words passed through them.

"We will let you in," Zethes decided "But the dragon must be deactivated. We cannot have fire in here." he looked at Festus with distaste "Fire ruins my hair."

Leo squirmed, rubbing his hands together before pulling some miscellaneous bits and bobs from his pockets, assembling them in someway and tucking the little, partially completed product back into his pocket. Then he turned to festus and made the great dragon retract into a suitcase, sized form of himself that, despite its appearance, almost definitely could not hold anything.

They walked forwards, past Calais as Zethes guided them forwards and he waited to take up the rear.

Leo was paused by the hulking Boread who paused him with a disconcerting, very loud sniff. That then dissolved into smaller, more frequent sniffs before Calais righted his posture and commented something that made Leo want to shrink in on himself, feeling less confident about the subject the dim Boread scrutinised than ever.

"Fire is bad," the ox-sized Boread stated as he followed Leo who had converted his walk into a sort of non-confident shuffle.

As they walked inside, they were met with a young woman whose appearance immediately succeeded in drawing all Leo's attention from his own control over fire to her.

She, however, was watching him through yes that did nothing but scrutinise in distaste, seeming much more friendly towards Jason in the way she gazed at their group.

Her hair was as dark as anything, to the point at which it seemed to be sucking the light from her immediate surroundings. Her skin was quite the opposite, the very unhealthy white colour - like that of the icy penthouse in which they stood - made to appear even more so because of the juxtaposing not-quite-colours.

Her eyes were the colour of coffee and continued to scrutinise Leo after she had examined his companions. She wore a white dress, a decoratively ornate crown of silver perched upon her mane of hair.

As Lance stood there, he could feel the odd, uncomfortable pull of the water in the ice surrounding him. He shivered, suddenly aware of the weight of the rifle in his bag.

"Wow," Leo didn't mean to speak aloud "you're hot!" Lance might have agreed had she not looked as ready to kill Leo as she did at that moment.

"Hot?" She sounded bewildered and upset "You dare insult me? I am cold, Leo Valdez." her eyes scanned him further as they narrowed, somewhat hidden in the sharp lines and angles of her conventionally attractive face "Very cold."

She took a few steps forwards, her sweeping skirt trailing behind her as she moved elegantly.

"You will stay here," she commanded him as his heart dropped just a centimetre or two in his chest "With my dearest brother, Calais." from the tone of her voice, dry and sharp, not at all affectionate, it was evident she was not being earnest in her statement.

So Leo was left with the great mountainous Cal who soon seemed to cement the idea that he could not speak words consisting of more than two syllables, confirming the origin of his nickname to be the simple fact he was incapable of saying his own name.

Khione, the daughter of Boreas with whom they had united moments prior, walked alongside Jason who kept his eyes fixed on Piper who was, in turn, being trailed by Zethes who was adamant with his body language he was not going to move away.

For once, Lance was glad of the fact he was left alone, not wanting to be trailed so closely by the immortal figures, one of whom was intimidating, the other of which was just not particularly pleasant and was clearly trying to be much cooler than he actually was.

His attempts were somewhat futile.

There was a man, sturdily built with long hair and facial hair that appeared to be frozen as though he had drenched them in water before standing in the coolest spot he could find for a few hours, sitting on a throne on a raised platform in the room. He was dressed in a suit that looked to be quite literally made of snow, wings like those of his son protruding from his back.

He looked over them for a while before speaking, interrupting whatever Jason was about to say, most likely, judging by the personality of the boy in question, a polite introduction to the God.

"What is that on your forearm, demigod?" he asked Jason whose eyes flitted back down to the dozen lines on his arm beneath the symbol of his father.

"Please, Aquilon-" he began, only to be cut off by Boreas' form flicking between how it had been at the beginning and into one of a sterner seeming entity.

"Demigod," he pleaded as his form settled back to how it should have been "I request of you - please use my Greek name exclusively."

"We were told you know where Aeolus is?" Lance asked a little while later, growing impatient with the conversation that was going absolutely nowhere.

The god sighed as Khione took a step forwards, halted by the god's raised hand.

"He became angry with the gods when they defeated Typhon in the war. It released a wave of wind spirits and now he is expected to gain control over them. I am afraid, as he cannot take out his anger on the gods, he is doing so on you, their children. He has ordered us to kill any demigods who come in request of our help," Lance and Piper both edged backwards uneasily.

Boreas did not seem to notice, though Khione and Zethes did, and merely continued as though he had said nothing to be even mildly concerned about.

"He did, however mention a child of Zeus to whom we need to listen before passing judgement."

Jason began to uncharacteristically stutter over words that refused to form in either his head or in reality, finding himself incapable of explaining their position when so much was at stake. But, luckily, Piper stepped up and began that response for him.

As she finished, he looked at her, nodding knowingly.

"I know of these storm spirits of which you speak," he began contemplatively "and, consequently, of their mistress. She resides in a windy city within the gods' control,"

"That being?" lance asked with a single cocked eyebrow as it became evident the god did not intend to elaborate.

"Chicago."

"You accept this?" A sceptical Khione asked her father as she continued to look at the demigods disapprovingly, Jason with a bit more fondness than the others. She would not admit her jealousy of Piper and was somewhat strange about Lance who was clearly directly descended from the past lover of hers, Poseidon.

"Do you have any alternative proposals?" The composed god asked with genuine curiosity.

"I suggest we turn them to statues," She grinned maniacally "I would love to expand my collection, the blonde one would make a fine addition."

"I second that proposal." Zethes added, looking over Piper who didn't know where to tread as moving away from him would only bring her closer to Boreas.

"I reject." Boreas told them but he had missed the optimum timing and neither of his children seemed willing to turn back as they lurched forwards to attack.

They were much in their element, their inherited powers useful and much useable in the surroundings.

With nothing else to do, Lance, Piper and Jason all ran, skirting around the sides of the two immortal beings who were approaching them relentlessly.

Lance slid across the floor, easily standing, isolated in a corner away from Piper and Jason who were, luckily for him, the main targets of the two.

Less luckily, his weapon was concealed in the bag worn on his back and, therefore, not the easiest to retrieve. He was forced to watch the battle going on to his side, watch his friends running about as they were attacked, neither in their element as it was loud and Piper had nothing she could think to say and Jason's control over wind was not that helpful as a defensive tactic from the onslaught of ice, wind and snow that approached them.

But, the second he had the rifle cradled in his arms, he threw himself in front of them, silently cursing the fact he did not have control over his inherited powers or even the knowledge of how to activate them.

Still, he shouted in protest and the defence of his friends.

"You won't hurt them!" He declared as he shot a warning bullet to the wall besides Boreas who did not seem to care about the actions of his children. The God recoiled slightly in surprise but Zethes had something to say.

"But we're immortal. You can't kill us."

Lance didn't have a response prepared and was merely trapped with Jason and Piper, right in the line of fire of the two immortal beings, essentially defenceless.

He was just left to wonder about how Leo was doing in that moment...

 **A/N** **Hi. So my laptop isnt working so i had to write this on someone else's and am typing this A/N on my phone so I apologise if this is full of typos. I just thought I'd say now that I'd love to have another chapter up on Lance's birthday (July 28th) but won't be able to unless my laptop decides to work again so Im just gonna have to wish my fav happy birthday now and apologise if I cant get that chapter up when I mean to.**


	9. Chapter 9

Leo could, with only the faint audio of the room available to him, pinpoint the exact moment things had went wrong. There had been a shout, the noise muffled through the walls of ice to the point of incoherency, but, even if he did not know of the words that had been spoken, he was much convinced they were words to be feared.

The shout had been followed by a bang, a rash, various other noises Leo wasn't the keenest to hear because, with each one, his friends' states could be worsening. They could have been losing and he'd be none the wiser, standing there, beginning to smoulder, under the watch of Calais who, despite his very apparent dimness, Leo could not hope to bet in a battle with any physicality involved.

But Leo could not bear it when he heard the noise of a gun, likely Lance's, firing off as his friend shouted indignantly before being met with words, again so muffled Leo had very little chance of finding out their meaning.

He felt his heart drop in his chest when the words were met with only silence, beginning to worry he may have missed the chance to help. What if he was too late?

But he couldn't give up; he just had to find a way past Calais.

Intelligent eyes searched the room for a solution until the settled upon a rather obvious one they could simply not think of failing. Cursing himself for not thinking of it sooner, Leo took a step back, glanced over at Calais who appeared to be none the wiser, then another, glance, step, glance, step, glance, step.

Then he was there, standing with a hand, surely rather hot as there were trails of steam curling up from the outstretched, nimble fingers, hovering as inconspicuously as he could manage over the case of bronze that could, with a simple command in a series of whirs and clicks, unfurl back out into the dragon he was sure could help him, could help all of them.

Calais turned round to be met with the image of a large bronze dragon, its expressionless face seemingly angry as its unliving eyes tared at him, the mouth opening wide with a few creaks from the mechanisms that allowed such a thing to happen, instead of the image of the scrawny son of Hephaestus he was meant to be keeping a watch over.

He barely had time to yell to the son of Hephaestus before the dragon let loose a spiral of frame from is throat that Calais had no chance of escaping from.

He screeched as he crumbled, falling into particles of dust the wind was none too kind to, allowing Leo a quick path to his friends, followed by the giant dragon he only hoped could save them.

He knew Calais would reform, he just hoped it wouldn't be too soon - they needed absolutely no more additional problems.

Leo noticed a pair of eyes latch onto him even before Festus had crashed through the wall, much too big to make use of the doorway Lo had passed through. Lance was looking at him thankfully as he stood in front of Piper and Jason protectively with the rifle in his arms aimed decisively but not being used to shoot of at all. Leo noticed a small hole in the wall over where Boreas sat, only just missing the god. He supposed it was intentional that the shot missed.

"Run!" Leo yelled as loudly as he could manage, not noticing the tuft of hair that promptly burst into flame at the top of his head.

His comrades were quick to comply to his wishes, running as fast as their legs could possibly carry them towards him. Though Khione ad Zethes were unwilling to let up for a second.

They remained in hot pursuit, approaching Leo just a quickly as his friends.

He grit his teeth as he watched the pursuers get nearer and nearer their targets, reluctant to release any fire from his palms after what he had done in the past but willing if it meant he could save his friends. But he found he didn't need to.

Without warning, both children of Boreas went to take another step but found themselves meeting with the floor rather than their targets.

"What?" Kione sounded nothing if not outraged as she tried to wrestle herself back to her feet but found she could only move one leg from its place.

Both she and Zethes looked back to find themselves shackled to the floor by restraints of water that were much stronger than they had any right to be. At about the same instant in that short span of time each of them felt was much longer than it possibly could have been, the eyes of all the fleeing demigods caught the same image.

Lance just stared slightly blankly as Leo's hand lathed onto his am and pulled him decisively backwards, away from the scene as Festus charged forwards, unleashing more burning flames upon the room as Boreas made to flee as the battle finally caught up to him and Khione and Zethes finally managed to break free. They didn't get far.

At last, lane felt the overwhelming roar of the wave in his ears lessen before dissipating entirely, fading away into nothingness and allowing the sounds of the world around him to come flooding back.

He felt himself running properly then, breaking away from leo's grip and rushing on ahead of him, knowing the infrastructure of the penthouse had been challenged by their actions. Leo ran a bit faster when he wasn't trying to keep Lance moving so he wasn't left behind or long and Lance soon took to grabbing his arm as Festus followed behind them.

Even Piper was thankful when they got back onto festus, as much as she didn't like the dragon.

After the heavy breathing had passed and the penthouse, of which there was surely not much left as it had been melting bit by bit even as they fled, had long since gone out of sight Jason decided he had something to say to Lance.

"You did that?" He confirmed, referencing the shackles on the floor that just might have saved hem from a fate much worse than that with which they had been met.

"I think so…"

"Why didn't you do it earlier then?" he sounded a little bit angry.

Lance threw his hands up into the air, somewhere between a mock surrender and a movement to convey his exasperation "I didn't know how and I don't know how I did it even now. Okay?"

"Huh," the anger had quickly been replaced with a contemplative air "You really haven't had a chance to practice with anything aside from that weapon have you?"

"No." Lance tugged at the straps of the bag slung across his back that contained his rifle.

"It would be a good idea to get some practice," Jason informed "I don't know what the mist will do to a rifle but I do know it's not the best of ideas to take it out in public - if we have to fight in a populated place it'll be the best idea to do it as inconspicuously as possible. Who would suspect us of all the weird things happening with the weather?"

"I suppose," Lance conceded "But we're a bit busy - we might need to put a hold on that."

"We could all do with some practice," Piper agreed as she looked at the reflective blade of Katoptris as it sat in her hands.

The ground below them was changing the further along they flew, trying not to soar above the most populated of places if they could help it due to their doubt in the mist's ability to normalise something as abnormal as a gleaming bronze dragon.

The surrounding air changed too, travelling through varying degrees of warmth, of cold, of humidity, of frostiness. Every now and then they would hear the rain falling around them, feel it patter across their skin as the gripped just a little bit tighter onto the one thing keeping them in the air as it became more slippery.

Lance couldn't help but stare up at the crying sky the first time the rain had fallen around them.

He muttered to himself in his mother tongue "Me perdí este,"

Leo looked back at him.

"What? The rain?"

"Yeah,"

"Why?"

Lance shook his head "I don't remember," Leo snickered and Lance smiled at him lopsidedly in response "I just feel as though it's been a while. I think someone mentioned something about 'rain' that would kill you last time I talked about this?"

"What?"

"I really don't know."

"Lance," Piper said from behind him "You should stop treating your memories as though they are even remotely normal."

"Clearly," he chuckled as the sky around them grew darker.

Piper yawned, looking at both Jason and Lance, both in front of and behind herself, with a warning.

"I'm tired," She declared "You'd better not let me fall."

"I wouldn't purposefully!" Lance told her indignantly.

Piper didn't take long to fall asleep, even if she was cold and the rain had rendered her damp her choppy hair sticking to both her forehead and neck.

But her rest was riddled with nightmares that made her feel as though she would be more relaxed had she forced her eyes to stay open: it was the same dream as she had been having for a while, the dream in which she saw both her father and a giant. But, this time around, it was different.

There wasn't a glimpse of her father to be seen and she found something out about that great, fiery giant she wished never to see again, either in her sleeping or waking moments.

The giant's name was Enceladus and he was trying to bribe her into betrayal.

He told her in that booming voice of his that hurt her ears to listen to that she should come to him on the afternoon of their solstice deadline, that she should betray her friends and Hera and go to him. If she did she could live in peace with her father.

She didn't care if it was just a dream: it was a demigod dream and demigod dreams had a tendency to be upsettingly prophetic.

Not for the first time, in the midst of that fitful sleep she was both desperate and reluctant to break free from, she just wished for the normalcy she had never once experienced.

After all, how could the kleptomaniac, delinquent daughter of a millionaire actor who had never known her mother (and had recently found out she was a goddess from the pantheon of ancient Greece of all things) and didn't know how much she really knew her father, the same girl who swore her actions weren't really as bad as people liked to declare them, ever be normal?

 **A/N  
So, my computer's working again!**

 **I'm sorry about the length of this chapter by the way, it' not that bad but it's a tad shorter than usual. You'll forgive me because it's an early update, right?**

 **I'd like to mention that the little bit of Spanish I used I got from the internet because I don't speak Spanish, so if you speak Spanish and it's wrong please correct me and I'll fix it.**

 **I can actually 'celebrate' Lance's birthday on time!**

 **I'm really sorry if I accidentally put Lane instead of lance at some point by the way, my computer is lagging a bit because my correcting software uses the internet to run and I write in google docs because I don't have word on here and it is very confusing (the wifi at my house is honestly terrible).**

 **This is irrelevant at this point so you don't have to read it if you don't want, but why does this site have to use the US date system? It's so confusing!**

 **Why would you put the month before the date? It just makes everything difficult! The date at the corner of my computer screen is 28/07/2017 but this is going to upload and say that it was updated on 07/28/2017 and I'm going to forget at some point and just be incredibly lost:**

" **What the bloody hell is this? There aren't twenty eight months!"**

 **Anyway, enough of that.**

 **All the best,**

 **~We'reAllABitOdd**


	10. Chapter 10

Piper woke up feeling as though she was falling.

Then her eyes fluttered open, stung by the whipping wind that roared in her ears, and she watched as the ground below her grew larger.

She barely began to scream when she was jerked upwards by an arm wrapped around her waist.

Unfortunately, the grasp of Jason Grace, who could have stopped the fall if it was her alone he had to prevent from plummeting, only slowed the descent due to the fact Lance and Leo were also hanging off him much like herself. They spiralled downwards, Piper whimpering as she watched her knuckles, desperately gripping at Jason's shirt, whiten, not fast enough to kill them upon impact but likely fast enough to hurt.

"Oh god," She heard Lance say.

"What?" she asked, face determinedly turned upwards so she didn't see the fast-approaching ground below her.

"Look down for a second," He told her, voice carried away a fair bit by the roaring wind around them.

"What? No! Why?"

"Because we're about to crash into a warehouse!"

Then they began to speed up, falling faster and faster until the only thing Piper could hear, drowning out even the noise of her own screaming, was the whipping wind that surrounded them in their fall. Then the noise was stopped by the shattering, splintering noise of the old roof they went crashing through.

Piper could hear mutters of pained complaint as she, with complaints of her own, pried herself off of the floor. It was cold where she had landed, damp beneath her and beginning to soak through her clothes.

Her breath was heavy, panicked, but slowed a little as she felt that familiar arm around her waist once again. She leant back, eyes closed, into him as she heard the gentle pants of laboured breath around her begin to slow.

Leo sat, back pressed against the dusty wall, clutching a little piece of bronze in his hand, digging into his palm slightly, leaving an impression, a line of pink and white.

"Festus," he mumbled as he watched the dull glinting of the metal he held, eyes catching Lance's after skimming over Piper and Jason.

There was an unspoken communication between the two with a gentle nod.

"We're going to try to find Festus." he declared as Lance pushed his back against the wall and brought himself up onto his feet.

Piper nodded slowly as she watched her friends begin to walk away.

"Well," Lance began as he looked around "he can't be far…" He didn't understand why he liked Festus as much as he did, clearly much more than Piper did. There was always that weird image in his mind he couldn't believe when he began to think of the bronze dragon as anything more than the conglomerate of mechanical parts it appeared to be. The clarity of that image he didn't dare mention was startling, especially amongst the haziness he had begun to think characteristic of his resurfacing memories.

"He isn't," Leo confirmed as he gripped the tiny little bit of metal he held in his hand that little bit tighter and pointed over at a metallic glint that was barely visible in the ever dimming sunlight that illuminated the world around them.

"He's not moving though," Lance commented as they made their way over "aside from a few little bits of shrapnel like the bit you have he looks pretty much intact."

"Must be an internal issue," Leo mused as he looked over the large automatum and began to search for the problem he knew was there.

He searched around for a bit until he came across the problem.

He furrowed his brow as his calloused hand gently brushed the control disk. He withdrew it quickly, feeling the bite of the cold violently assaulting his nerves.

"That's strange…" he mumbled as he began to work on removing it from the gargantuan automatum.

"What is?" Lance asked with an eyebrow raised, hands on his hips as he watched Leo as he pulled the control disk from Festus, speaking loudly to be heard over the clinking of tools against metal.

"It's frozen…"

"How?" Lance was just as confused as Leo "Working mechanics generate heat-"

"So it shouldn't have been able to freeze." Leo finished for him, sitting back on his heels as he did so, control disk, iced over, sitting in his hands.

Leo's hand found its way deep into the interior of his tool belt, slung lopsidedly round his narrow hips, as he dug out the supplies necessary to clean it. He paused after a moment, spotting a figure in the area that was so barren of life as it was; a figure that held no semblance to Lance who was ducked down behind him, checking whatever aspects Festus' condition he was able to. He squinted his eyes, watching the figure as it lapsed into focus, a blur that gradually grew in clarity before him.

A nerve in his mind was struck by the sudden, unnerving appearance of that familiar frame. It was earthen and feminine, but, for all its soft-seeming grace, he couldn't associate that familiar appearance with any pleasant experiences.

He heard her voice, dancing on the wind, all deceptively soft tones as it spat words like venom. A tentative glance behind him proved to Leo that lance had not noticed, or perhaps had deemed her presence unimportant.

Then the voice grew in volume, approaching him steadily as the woman moved over the floor as though she was gliding rather than walking. It was then, when the illusion of gliding was broken by the snapping of a twig underfoot, that Lance, slightly startled by the sudden somewhat jarring sound, looked up.

He looked around for a moment before his eyes settled on the woman of earthen tones. He jumped up, feet having been tucked beneath him as he crouched. Seeing Leo so on edge and having learnt from his earlier mistakes, Lance slung the bag from his back before the woman could prove herself to be a danger.

He held the rifle in his arms as he watched her, distantly wondering what the mist he had heard about made the weapon he held appear to be. He was sure it would be a rather strange thing, but as long as it wasn't another potentially lethal weapon he supposed it was an improvement.

Then the woman lunged forwards, the words leaving her mouth suddenly very easy to hear, sending shivers rushing down both Lance's spine and Leo's.

"Come on," She urged in that silky tone of hers "Come on, leave them," A smile found its way onto her face as her tongue lashed those words, laced in all manner of deadly poisons, like a whip, pushing it passed those lips that seemed to spit each of them. All the feminine gentleness had been pushed away by the glint in her eyes, like steel, that looked sharp enough to cut.

"Join me!" She urged, lips splitting into a smile as her face dimpled around it.

"I won't!" Leo declared, holding the words tightly before he spoke them in an attempt to ensure they did not shake.

His eyes frantically scanned the environment once again. He bitterly noted, much to his chagrin, life would appear not to be the only thing the scene was barren of. There was very little in ways of anything in their surroundings.

He searched again, growing ever more desperate for a solution. Then he saw it and, with a slight snicker, an idea came to mind. He held a hand out behind him, an action that indicted for Lance, ready to move, coiled like a spring, to stay where he was as Leo sprinted towards the lone porta potty in their immediate vicinity.

The woman made a sharp turn when Leo abruptly moved, running towards the porta potty he was stood behind, holding his breath against the potent stench and feeling his head begin to spin.

But he saw his chance as it came and definitely was not prepared to miss it. He pressed his back against the outer wall of the porta potty and heaved, using his legs to push back into the stall as it began to tip and Lance, seeing his aim, rushed to help him. It didn't take a moment for the woman to be crushed beneath the awful smelling cubicle she had seen tilting as she rushed in pursuit, not stopping speaking those awful words of hers, like weapons unleashed from her mouth, until she had been entirely covered by the dark shadow of her impending doom via portable toilet cubicle.

Leo felt all the air in his lungs leave, releasing the tightness in his chest that had built up progressively the longer his ribcage had served as an actual cage for air.

He slumped to the floor, feeling a dull ache in his legs as he watched Lance move to collect the control disc that had fallen from Leo's fingers when he had run. But he didn't have time to thank lance, his thoughts were soon ruled by the loud bang and sudden scream that had pierced the air like a blade.

Lane looked around as leo did the same, both pairs of eyes landing upon the warehouse where hey had landed and running towards it as fast as they could, Leo pulling a hammer from his belt as they ran, Lance cradling the weapon in his hands tighter and closer to him as, disjointedly and differently paced, both his footsteps and Leo's hammered over the ground.

Leo felt the heft of the heavy hammer in his arms properly for the first time as they drew to a sudden halt and the excess weight proved rather jolting. He got over it quick enough as, with a gentle breath as his hand hovered over the door, Lance opened the entrance to the warehouse they had earlier found themselves in.

The door creaked as though it were protesting against being used and, in the dark, near empty space, their footsteps echoed, sounding much louder than they had the right to.

As his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, Leo found the problem to become immediately evident.

His friends were bound and gagged, unable to move and hovered over by three hulking forms.

The forms were not quite human yet not far from. He didn't know what they were until one turned, alerted by the noise, and, as he and Lance dived as quietly as they could behind the cover of what appeared, in the darkness, to be an old, partially assembled car, let them see his face. It was rather ugly but, amidst the boils, warts and greyish pallor the skin had adopted in the less than ideal light, there was one rather defining feature.

"Is that," Lance kept his voice down, watching the scene through eyes that seemed to analyse with a sort of semi-familiarity Leo didn't want to know the origin of and was sure Lance himself didn't know the story behind "a cyclops?"

"I suppose it is," Leo responded, voice just as quiet. He watched the scene himself, through the veil of the dust floating in the air before them, lifted from the blanket of it decorating the car by their breath.

"What do you suggest we do?" Leo asked after a moment of watching his friend's squirm and struggle against the rope that was surely rubbing away at their wrists and ankles as they tried desperately and hopelessly to release themselves from its constraints.

"Good question," Lance's eyebrows knitted together as he looked for any solution he possibly could "There's a lot of old machinery here…" he observed before his eyes flashed bright with the light of dawning realisation "You can control some of it, surely. You'd just have to make a remote and I can make sure those monsters can't do anything to you while you work, I'll shoot them if they get near but if that happens our cover's blown so just-" he bit his lip as he scanned the scene again, almost like a routine as he took in everything, moving over his suffering friends as quickly as he could.

"Just what?"  
"Just be quick," Lance finished "And quiet," he added as an afterthought.

But then the largest of the monsters lunged forwards at Piper and he yelled before any harm could come to her. The monster stopped in its tracked, turning its single-eyes line of vision to Lance as all three made lumbering movements in his direction. He shot at the first, sending a bullet into its chest, making it fall back as it began to crumble, arms, held to either side of it like a poor imitation of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil. The arms that had not yet rumbled into the same dust knocked its companions back.

Lance ducked behind the aged vehicle once again.

"I thought you said be quiet!" Leo hissed, his position still unknown even if lance had given his away.

Pushing himself from his knees to the balls of his feet as he prepared to move away and join the battle he had made inevitable he commented "Consejos vendo y para mí no tengo," as he stood.

Then he ran and Leo's hands began working at much more urgent speeds to create the remote.

He grimaced as he watched the first of the monsters resurrect itself from a pile of dust like a phoenix from the ashes, body coming together in a grotesquely fascinating manner Leo was well aware he had no time to waste watching.

 **A/N**

 **It's late because technology hates me, but it's here and, fingers crossed, I'll be able to get the next update up on time.**

 **Just a quick message from me that has no significance to the story so there's no pressure on you to read it, but has anyone watched** _ **In a heartbeat**_ **? It's adorable and the animation is really high quality so I'd recommend, if you haven't, that you send four minutes of your life watching it.**

 **Another quick recommendation from me would be that, if you can, you should really watch the film Dunkirk. It's accurately full of British actors (you know how refreshing it is for me to hear such familiar accents in a film?) and Harry Styles is actually very good in it. The film doesn't actually have a plot, it just shows these different sections of things that would have happened at Dunkirk so it's very easy to follow. It's also not romanticised or made more heroic than it was meant to be. We lost that battle and there was no romance involved.**

 **As always, feel free to tell me if there are any particularly annoying typos, if you tell me where things are it makes them much easier for me to change them.**

 **Thanks to anyone who has read, favorited, followed or reviewed, it means a lot to me. Constructive criticism is always welcome.**

 **All the best,**

 **~We'reAllABitOdd**


	11. Chapter 11

Leo had to ditch the idea of assembling emote for a moment as he watched disaster unfold, Lance unable to put it on pause long enough to free Jason and Piper who were still bound. It was with a heavy eye and flitting glance around the room that served no real purpose that he did it; he thrust his hand away from his body, towards a chain dangling from the ceiling, some work in progress or another suspended by it, and prayed to God - or _The Gods_ \- that it would work.

He hadn't don it in a long time, he had been to scared to, but, by some miracle, the flame arose from seemingly nowhere and flew. It was hot and the chain was made of pretty thin, rusting metal that would probably snap of its own accord before the year was done. Needless to say, the chain broke and the suspended work fell. _Right onto two of the three cyclopes._

Lance's head whipped around in a second, eyes questioning, looking for answers. But, when he caught leo's expression, he didn't voice a single one of his curiosities, just nodded and turned to the last cyclops, stunned to stillness, and sent a bullet right through him.

All of a sudden, the only noises in the warehouse were sighs of relief and the metallic clinking of the cartridge of the bullet clattering to the floor by Lance's feet.

Leo looked at lance and both quickly ran forward to untie their friends and book it out of there before any one of the three monsters could reform.

They stumbled out of the door in an unorganised cluster, almost falling over each other as they breathed heavily in the relief they hadn't had time to properly express before. After a moment, Jason stood up and slammed the door closed as the piles of dust on the floor began to reform, building up piece by piece into a grotesque monster that would soon attack them once again.

"What do we do about them?" he asked, knowing full well they couldn't just make a quick getaway if Festus wasn't in working condition yet.

"We pile a load of stuff against it and hopes that holds long enough for us to leave." Lance suggested.

"That's awfully optimistic," Piper fretted, worrying the hem of her t-shirt between her fingers.

"It's not." Lance told her "It's just the only option we have right now - unless, of course, anyone else has one?"

No one made a move to propose a new idea.

"Welp, I guess that settles it. Leo, you know what you're doing more than any of us do - you go fix festus, we'll try to trap these things. I guess you can scream if anything happens and we'll come over."  
Leo sighed "Geez, thanks Lance. How very kind you are." But, despite the abundance of sarcasm that filled his voice, he knew Lance was being nice. Lance knew about Leo's fire but he wasn't saying anything and was leaving Leo space to use it and fix things far more quickly than he would be able to without it. So he left with no further complaints, rounding the corner and picking up where he and lance had hurriedly left off.

They had gotten lucky with the amount of miscellaneous items were scattered outside of the rundown warehouse, some much heavier than others. There was a car door that Lane carried over with ease but then a proceeding engine he huffed when lifting and stumbled forward with like a headless chicken until Jason came to help him.

That was the last of the items. They all fell back again, backs pressed against the rough pile that was slowly but surely cutting into them and definitely leaving rather prominent smears of grease on their clothes. Lance had ditched his jacket a while ago, both sitting in his lap.

"How the quiznak does something that small weigh that much?!" lance asked the second he hit the floor.

There was dead silence for a moment before both Piper and Jason had slid down from their sitting position in raucous fits of laughter.

"What? What? Why are you laughing?" Lance was just thoroughly bewildered by the seemingly unprovoked laughter that surrounded him.

"Qu-qui-" Piper started before breaking off into another fit of laughter that only escalated Jason's own.

"Wha-at" Lance asked again, almost a whine, the syllable stretched out.

"Quiznak!" She finally managed before falling back into her laughter.

"Quiznak? Lance was confused once again "What is quiznak?"

"How should we know?" Jason had managed to calm himself somewhat "You're the one that said it."

"Yeah!" Piper was still giggling a bit, but not so much as before "You should be telling us what it means!" She was gasping for air at the end of the sentence, trying to gulp back the ends of her laughter.

"Amnesia," Lance cocked an eyebrow "remember?"

"But-" Piper began.

"No." Lance cut her off abruptly "No buts. Shut your quiznak!"

Piper didn't have time to laugh again as Leo rounded the corner, Festus in tow, back in working order.

Leo was getting sort of weirded out as they flew through the pale blue skies, shrouded in barely-there wisps of cloud and being vaguely blinded by the distant glare of the sun. That was because the blue of the sky wasn't the only blue he could see. The other was Lance's eyes. That were opened wide. Looking at him. Not blinking. Staring.

Eventually, as Leo realised turning around wasn't doing much when he could literally feel lance's gaze drilling holes into the back of his head, he just looked over his shoulder and asked the question he had wanted to ask for the last half an hour.

"What?" he asked "You haven't blinked in so long it's actually starting to scare me."  
"What's the name?" Lance mumbled, not really to Leo, more to himself. Thin eyebrows lowered over still firmly fixed eyes.

"What?

"What is it?"

"Lance!" Piper had peered around his shoulder after she heard the not-quite conversation and jabbed him hard in the spine as she yelled his name in his ear.

"Ah! Yes sir - I was listening, the answer to number three is 27!"

"What?" Leo asked, not understanding the spiel of nonsense Lance spoke.

"No idea." Lance deadpanned "What is it?"

"Why have you been staring at me?"

"I have?" Leo nodded "Well, you know how I'd always say you were like someone I knew when we were at the Wilderness school?" he nodded again "I still can't think of their name."

"You said it was P-something most of the time, but sometimes it's turn into a K."

"Hmm," Lance made a noise of agreement as he sunk his chin into the palm of his hand, eyes cast downwards as his mouth shifted upwards.

One minute.

Two minutes.

Three minutes.

Then, finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he snapped his fingers sharply, eyes widening once again.

"Pidge!" he exclaimed, completely catching everyone by surprise.

"What?" Leo asked after the initial surprise of the shout - the same which had caused the last couple of birds who were brave enough to fly near Festus to fly away in fear - had faded.

"Pidge - the friend you remind me of!"

"You had a friend called Pidge?" Jason asked from the back, speaking for the first time in a while.

"Have." Lance corrected "She's still my friend - I guess I just need to find her again."  
"In Cuba?" Leo asked, thinking back to camp Halfblood, still kind of wishing they were there still.

"No," Lance shook his head, words (or word) adamant even if his face was not.

"How are you so sure?" Leo asked, not looking at Lance but rather at the sky ahead of them off into the distance where they were slowly heading.

"I don't know."

A moment more passed in yet another bout of silence.

Then Leo broke it.

"Wait," He turned around again "Where did the K come from?"

"I wish I could tell you,"

Jason had sat there in near silence for the entirety of the conversation because he was trying to do the same thing - trying to fish for a memory. Well, it wasn't quite fishing for a memory, it was fishing for the barest trace of one.

"I guess you can remember a friend's name and not your own last name, huh?" Leo said to Lance who sort of stared distantly beyond him, off at the seemingly empty space that stretched above them.

"Yeah," His answer was just as distant as his mannerisms at that moment. It may have seemed empty but Lane felt like that space above them was anything but. It felt familiar, as if it was full of life; he wished he had any semblance of an idea as to why.

It started raining before they got to Chicago. All of a sudden they passed from clear skies into a dense, grey cloud cover that poured down on them. It was that awful sort of rain, the cold sort that pummelled you skin unrelentingly, the type that was speckled with large pieces of hail that hurt whether the skin they hit was bare or not. Yet, at the same time, it was the same sort that soaked you all at once rather than just in little dots that gradually grew, the type that made your hair go frizzy.

Lance had quickly rushed to pull his coat out of his back, promptly putting it on, doing it up and pulling the hood over his head, his eyes hidden in the shadow of the extra fabric.

"Unfair," Jason commented dryly as Piper zipped up her bodywarmer and tugged down her own hood.

"Live with it." Both she and Lance said wryly, giggling.

"I can't believe we were being attacked by cyclopes a few hours ago." Leo laughed.

"Me neither," Piper said "I'm not sure how much I can believe Cyclopes even exist."

Jason remained silent in the conversation and Leo and Piper were well aware as to why - of course he was used to this, he had always vaguely told them he was aware of these things, even if only in passing due to his memory. But, as always when they talked about things so completely mind-bogglingly insane as real mythological monsters, Lance stood far out from it - though, in actuality, he was sitting right in between it - without any sort of explanation.

It constantly made Leo and Piper wish both Jason and Lance had their memories - in addition to the obvious fact the two were their friends and obviously severely annoyed when they could not recall anything about their lives - because they were sure these two people would have some of the most interesting stories and experiences to share, the most intriguing people to talk about and - Leo's personal favourite - the funniest but most confusing, convoluted, you-had-to-be-there-esque inside jokes.

 **A/N**

 **I'm sorry to be giving you a fairly short chapter after how long it's been but I was busy and there really wasn't all that much more to say in this chapter.**

 **I'd like to clear up that Voltron will be in this eventually, but it is going to take a while. Also, because I've had people asking about this and I hadn't put much consideration into this before, I think I need to sort out what, if any, ships from Voltron there will be. So there is a poll on my profile. There is a gen option as well as klance and Shallura so, if you'd like to have a say on ships, go vote on this poll. I'll take it down when Voltron actually com into this and am only putting it up so early because I want to get as many opinions as possible. Also, I can put subtle hints of the leading choice in every now and then, but not enough to make it a problem if another option ends up on top at the end.**

 **Edit: So I had someone say they couldn't see the poll - that should be fixed now. Sorry.**

 **All the best,**

 **We'reAllABitOdd**


	12. chapter 12

Out of the sight of anyone, a great weapon landed gently on the ground. It rumbled as it settled to the ground and hissed as mouths opened like hatched and people, clothed rather oddly, walked out.

"You're sure," the one dressed in red asked as he stepped out of one if the coloured lions "that this is the right planet?"

"Absolutely." one with the most impressive orange moustache you will ever see and strange markings and ears responded "I checked the Castle's data, this is where the teleduv took us when it malfunctioned again and, it would appear, the only possible place for Lance to be."

"Then why has it taken us so long?"

"I was trying to see if I could pinpoint his location any more - it is a shame but I cannot."

"I see…"

"is there something else bothering you Keith?"

"It's just, this planet looks so much like home - how could it not be our Earth?"

"Come on Keith," Takashi Shirogane rested his flesh hand on the boy's shoulder "We're on the wrong side of the universe."

"I guess so. Anyway, do we know where we are heading from here?"

"barely." a soft feminine voice spoke in what was akin to a British accent "The best approach would be to approach a settlement and see if we can find anything at all about him."

"That's a long shot Allura…" the large boy standing behind her fretted "I mean, really, what are the chances we'll find anything at all?"

"Higher than if we just stand here arguing." another feminine voice interjected.

"I guess you're right Pidge."

"of course I am Hunk."

"Let's begin." Shiro directed them all back to their lions, having Coran group with Allura for the time being and leaving any doubt about what would happen behind for as long as possible. They hid the weapons as safely as they could and then began to walk beneath a scalding sun, over dusty desert floors.

To Keith, it felt like home.

Chicago was a dull city, or at least it seemed that way from their view above where clouds acted like a veil, separating Festus the flying dragon and his passengers from the city down below, where, between streets and office buildings and businesses, people were going about their lives, both normally and abnormally. For all they knew, looking down from a point at which people were barely limericks on the landscape, there could be someone getting engaged on one street corner, and another getting stabbed a few streets over.

They descended quickly, already strong wind picking up and lashing about madly as they travelled quickly down through it. Not one of them managed to make the trip down without violently shivering. Lance pulled the strings if his hood as tight as he could and tied them there, pulling the fabric close around his face. Piper laughed a little before doing the same with her own, clinching fabric closer to cheeks flushed red with the stinging cold they plummeted through.

They landed with a this and dismounted from the large dragon.

It didn't take long to find a number of wind spirits, dancing along each violent gust that threatened to bowl Leo over.

They talked for a little while before Leo turned back to Festus and summoned something from his toolbelt. Lance watched him, curious as to what it was.

Leo unfurled his fiat to reveal a cheap, brightly coloured plastic whistle that merely sat in the centre of his palm, fully glinting beneath what little sunlight could pass the clouds. Even Festus cocked his head, confused.

"Look buddy," Leo began, placing a hand on the head of the dragon "we're gonna follow these spirits. Just in case something goes wrong, I have this whistle with me. If i blow it you have to come and help. Got it?"

Festus expelled a puff of smoke from his mechanic nostrils. Apparently that was en9ugh if a yes for Leo who merely nodded. "Good," he said with a confident nod "see ya soon bud."

Lance watched the dragon slowly take a few steps away from them, glistening spine and shimmering tail swaying with the movement of immaculately constructed legs, now slick with rainwater. He smiled slightly even if he wasn't sure quite why.

However, that smile definitely faded as the spirits lead them onwards…

To a manhole cover.

"The sewer?" Piper crossed her arms and cocked an eyebrow, looking down at the cover distrustfully, with such an intensity one would almost believe she could see through it.

"I guess." Leo shrugged nonchalantly, dripping down so he rested on his toes, knees tucked up as he pried away the cover.

"You aren't bothered enough." Lance decided as he looked down at the dark space beneath the cover that was being gradually revealed as Leo struggled to pull away the heavy plate.

"says you! You're never bothered enough."

"...no comment…"

"Ha!" Leo shuffled back, dragging the cover with him before dropping it suddenly and listening as it slammed down to the floor.

"Well, Pipes, ladies first." he featured forwards with a wave if a hand, joking.

"good try - go on Leo."

Grumbling, Leo edged himself along the soaked pavement, letting his legs dangle into the darkness below. With a final grumble and accusatory look at Jason and Piper, he swung himself down. They watched him drop, deeper and deeper until he has completely disappeared into the dark. There had been a thud, a landing, moments later.

They stared down.

"Well," Lance stepped up himself and assumed the same position as Leo had "No time like the present."

They all followed after.

"Ugh," Lance looked around at the cavernous space around them "it stinks in here!"

"It's a sewer." Jason pointed out.

"No, really? I know it's a sewer! But why have they," he gestured to the wind spirits ahead of them, brought us down here?"

"not the foggiest." Piper was holding her nose as she looked around.

"well, we have to get going."

They walked down the straight path to the side of the waste that rushed along like a river beside them.

After a while they seemed to lose the spirits they has been following. They walked a little longer without their guides. Piper yawned. They came across a path that split in a couple of directions and gave up.

"Wanna just stay down here and try to find the spirits tomorrow?" Leo asked, looking fleetingly in either direction and realising he had no idea how to get out or find the spirits up ahead.

"Is rather not." Lance said as he sat down "But I guess we haven't got any other choice; we're about to drop and we're lost, we can carry on tomorrow."

They say there around a burning fire that illuminated the dark space. Leo looked over at Lance, his face glowing in the light of the flames, before looking at the flames themselves. It felt as though there were bugs crawling beneath his skin, traversing in a line towards his hands. He looked down.

"Leo," Jason began suddenly "since when could you…?" he featured at the fire, burning and crackling, unbothered by the unease surrounding it.

"since forever," he responded, looking up "but, really, it's a curse and I hate using it."

"A curse? It isn't a curse Leo, you could do great things with it."

"or horrible, awful things." he closed his eyes and breathed, trying to ignore the image flashing across the darkness, his mother's face, smiling with a stripe of oil on her dimpled cheek, then football consuming flames, bright relentless, burning, burning, burning.

"you can do horrible things with most things you can do good with." Lance looked at him "Honestly, more like all of them. It doesn't matter what they are, whether something is a curse or a blessing comes down to perspective."

"huh. Buy can it still be a blessing after you've done something terrible with it?"

"Why not?"

"Good point." Jason agreed.

Lance had put the fire out with what they had, the rushing sewer beside them That, rather than touching in any manner, he had concentrated on and willed to put out the flame before returning to the stream.

Afterwards, much later as Leo lay besides Lance who, though he had his eyes closed, probably wasn't asleep either, he replayed the earlier conversation over and 9ver again in his mind. It was as though, tired as his body was, Leo's mind would not allow him to rest, it was restless and working quickly, quickly, quickly.

He tried to sleep but he couldn't stop the shaking of his foot, tapping an erratic rhythm in the floor. It elevated in tempo until, as the memory ended for the umpteenth time, he stopped with a sight. Still, a tapping noise, softer than his own but just as fast, persisted. Lance definitely wasn't asleep.

Leo sat up, staring down at his own hands again. He breathed raggedly as he looked at the pads of callused fingers. He set one alight. It was a small flame, miniscule and controlled, only large enough to illuminate his own face rather than the pitch black space around them. He stared at it and it was as though it was staring back, glaring with fiery intensity.

He mumbled, never blinking "you are not a burden." he.was trying to convince himself but, as the mumble echoed, it seemed as though others were trying to do the same. He could have sworn he heard a hushed "You're right" respond.

They didn't know how far they were from civilisation but the sun above them had burned them for a long time, blazing. Then, eventually, they came across a couple of houses, nothing much, just a few detached buildings lined up. They were only small, sure, but they were the first sign of life they had seen aside from the animals they had passed in their journey.

Keith glanced at them as they walked between two.

"We can't be far now."

"Still, we don't even know if they'll speak English…" Hunk continued to fret a little "besides, what if they haven't seen him?"

"We have translators paladins." Coran looked at him.

"I doubt they will have seen him," Podge adjusted her glasses "Though that isn't to say they won't have news on him."

"He probably made something of an interesting entrance." Shiro added

"Subtlety never was his thing." Allura kept looking forwards, starting at the bright glow of the horizon ahead of them. As they walked there grew small disturbances. They grew and grew as they approached, getting bigger until it seemed as though there really was a town perched there.

"I just hope they know something - This is a bit of a different experience than rescuing someone from the Galra." Pidge sent a sideways glance at Shiro and continued to walk, determined they would find her friend.

A/N my computer is broken (So I haven't been able to respond to reviews!) which is why this is so late and probably full of typos (I wrote this whole thing on my phone!) Which is, in turn, why it's short. I'm sorry, I'm trying my best. Also, I had originally planned to have Voltron in earlier but then new seasons came out and I got nervous but they're here now. I'm not entirely sure where in the timeline this sits, definitely somewhere in season three or, at least, before the beginning of season 4.

I also haven't been able to check my poll so please feel free to leave ships in reviews.

~We'reAllABitOdd


	13. chapter 13

Lance had to admit, the sewer was the worst place he had ever woken up. Sure, there were bad places in his past, rising from unconsciousness when there was danger pressing in on them was never pleasant, but they didn't normally stink so much. He breathed as little as he could, trying to keep the pungent stench he recoiled from away from himself as he struggled to suppress a yawn.

He wasn't the first awake; Jason was sitting with his back to the grimy, damp wall, broad shoulders hunched over as his elbows rested decisively on his knees. He kept watch over his friends with bright blue eyes as Leo and Piper barely began to stir.

Lance decided to join him.

"Hey," He greeted nonchalantly, voice husky and raw from sleep.

"Morning," Jason nodded back as Lance fell to a similar position beside him "is there a problem?" he asked following a moment of silence.

Lance took a moment to answer, trailing the curve of the walls, the way his friends moved in their slowly lifting sleep, the way the sewage moved as though it almost were a river with his eyes before responding. "not really," he shrugged, eyebrows moving on his face as though mimicking his shoulders "just…" he spent another moment in silence, searching for a word that would work, he eventually settled on "confused,"

"Confused?" Jason repeated slowly and quietly, sounding as though he was as well all of a sudden "What about?"

"Everything," Lance chuckled darkly, the bitter sound seeming out of character and following with Jason's ears like a speeding train "it's hardly like I'm sitting here with nice, full memories of a normal life, a normal skill set, a normal family," he cast his eyes slowly downwards "But, specifically, it's the memory thing."

Jason was sure he knew at least to some extent how to relate to Lance in that situation so he hummed a little as an indication for Lance to continue. His acknowledgement was greeted with a sort of thankful grin Jason had not been expecting given the circumstances.

"Well, my first concern is, well, you…" Lance but his lip as Jason adjusted his posture and turned to stare at his friend. Lance laughed him off, the much clearer sound than before echoing slightly "I mean, why was I the only one who remembered that you were never there before that trip? The obvious answer would be it had something to do with whether people were mortals or demigod but, well we know that isn't the case,"

"I don't know," Jason admitted as he ran a finger over the raised edge of the small scar at his lip "but you aren't the only one who thinks it's strange. There's something, a factor that neither we nor whoever did this has accounted for,"

"But we have no clue what it is," Jason vaguely realised that Lance sounded more and more like himself as the remnants of sleep removed themselves from him "Because of this amnesia thing,"

"Kinda sucky, huh?"

"Yeah," the word was began with an exhale indicative of humour "I woke up in a hospital with a stranger at the foot of my bed, speaking a language he didn't, not even knowing why I know English even now because I'm sure I didn't live in America before, I got thrown into all of this madness and I'm somehow not surprised by most of It?! Quiznak! My life is a mess!"

Jason laughed as Piper and Leo, barely awake, giggled softly as they pushed themselves back onto their elbows "That still isn't a word Lance," he said as Lance sighed and leant back, gently whacking his head against the rough wall. He ignored the quick, sharp pain and put his hands to his head "all right, all right. Shut it guys."

And they did, a cloud of comfortable silence falling over them as Leo quietly ignited his finger tip, wincing as he did. The orange of the flame illuminated the space in which they sat, casting a warm glow around them that made the dim, dank sewer slightly less awful. Only slightly.

Lance sent him a small, encouraging glance but no words were exchanged. Not even as they all stood and decided on a direction to take. They had to try to find that spirit again or they may just be stuck in the putrid place for far longer than they had intended. Really, Jason thought any time at all on that place was too long but he did not voice his objections.

They all walked together in a single file line for a while, their sense of time skewed by the fact that there was no sunlight and checking a watch was barely a priority at the time.

Jason wasn't ashamed to admit that his surroundings faded entirely in that moment, his guard falling and his watch other his friends, all of whom walked in front of him, Lance's fast, lengthy strides up front, Leo's rushing, shuffling feet barely ahead of him, becoming lax.

There was, unsurprisingly, not much to observe in the seemingly labyrinth-esque network of tunnels in the system. Each tunnel was merely a replica of whatever one it branched off from, though maybe with minutely varying twists and turns and angles that would drive even the smartest, most capable people to insanity very quickly.

That thought ran around Lance's head as though it were entitled to be there. Every other run was accompanied by something that had been stuck in his head for far longer than he could cared to think about. It was a simple sound, a consonant sound, or rather two that came hand in hand yet he knew they formed different words.

He glanced backwards. Warm brown eyes, flame burning on his hand, goofy smile still present on a thin, oil-stained face with flushed cheeks and eyebrows that seemed to have a personality of their own.

He glanced to the side. A rushing river, splatters of barely visible green where mould and mildew sprouted from rough walls that the gay t light barely made visible, a steady drip coming from the ceiling with near perfect consistency. They were like syllables. P was one syllable. K was two. One drip. Two drips. One, two. It was always one to him.

He threw his haze further backwards and Jason caught It, suddenly pulled from his own daze as he watched Lance's eyes light up and glow brighter than the flame that lit their ways. A lopsided smile pulled at his lips as his cheeks dimpled and he happily exclaimed, coming to a halt and causing everyone else to follow him as he jabbed a slender hand towards Leo's chest proudly "Pidge!"

"Huh?"

"What?"

"Hmmm?"

Jason questioned him, questioned the seemingly nonsense word he sprouted, but he knew where it was coming from.

"You remembered something," and both he and Lance were ecstatic at the premise. As soon as Leo and Piper grasped the situation they caught up and their progress in their physical travel remained halted as Piper dived forwards.

She flung herself at Lance, gripping him in a hug as she chuckled and giggled and congratulated him, even if she wasn't one hundred percent why.

"So… Pidge?" Leo asked a little while later "What is that exactly?"

"A friend," Lance's smile had been steadily growing wider since it made its appearance and was showing no signs of stopping anytime soon "Pidge, Katie. P, K,"

And that was when Leo clocked on.

"That's who I remind you of!" Lance's cheeks were hurting like crazy but the smile didn't drop.

"it's hazy," he admitted "there's no real memory of an event," he wrung his hands "but there's a person. A girl, a good friend, crazy smart, a little hyperactive, A little, well… little. Leo, she's pretty alike to you. Ummmm…" and Jason could tell that there was something akin to pain in the concentration that suddenly coloured Lance's face.

"ummmmmm..." He continued, clenching and unclenching his fists periodically. Piper winced a little at the purpling crescent moons forming low on his palm.

"Ummmmmmm…" but this time the clenching turned to a little celebratory clap "She was looking to her brother," he recalled "and her dad, so she lied to get into the school. There's something about green? A lot of jargon I don't get and… colour coding?"

Lance couldn't quite make sense of any of It, not completely, but it was relaxing to know something, no matter how small. He really did feel a sense of pride floor having finally accomplished something in terms of His missing memories.

"Hey Lance," Piper began as they began to move again "is that all you remember?" he was about to say it was but then she jumped in and refined her query and he couldn't anymore "how about your last name?"

It had been a while, but the fuzzy images filled Lance's brain. One of the figures, small with large glasses and young features, manages to pull itself into focus whereas the rest remained indistinguishable blobs of colour. The girl he saw was pulling funny faces at another figure, a man he supposed, who seemed to be an authority figure.

In a deep voice, the man read something out that made Lance feel as though a great weight he hasn't even realised he had been carrying had been removed from his shoulders.

"it's McClain," he told Piper.

They let the ecstatic lance drift to the back of their line, dreamy and far away but as happy as any of them had ever seen him.

He muttered one final thing before falling into complete silence.

"Grappling hook?"

Keith could attest to the fact that the language he hears was not English and the country in which they stood was not inhabited by copious amounts of people who spoke the language. Nevertheless, the translators took the tongue Keith couldn't hope to recognise and twisted it and melted it and rewrote it in a way that made it sound English even though he knew it was not.

Hunk had listened as Shiro led the conversation. He had almost squeaked in excitement as an old newspaper, crumpled and with ink running in a few places as though it had been wet, was handed over by a fairly young woman and her smiling child. They had thanked them as they left to go fawn over the flimsy paper.

The article wasn't written in English either, but the translator did it's job. It was slower than it was with speech and the glasses he had to put on made Shiro's head go fuzzy as he watched the script shift dizzyingly, but by bit, the movement almost too smooth.

Pidge glanced over with a pair of translator-glasses perched on her petite nose in place of her ordinary pair she had gotten from her brother when he left before the failed Kerberos mission. Slowly, she read what it said.

"Do you recognise this boy?"

Coran faintly answered "yes"

"a global phenomenon, meteor boy, or miracle boy, is an amnesiac teenager who was found on the outskirts of New York City and has been able to remember nothing since. If you have any knowledge on who he may be, contact the number below."

"Amnesiac," Keith echoed. Pidge didn't miss how disappointed he sounded "he probably doesn't even remember us…" at that, Hunk felt his own heart wedge itself in his throat.

"but we have a point of contact!" Allura exclaimed as she eagerly repeated the slightly smudged number.

"But no phone, mobile or otherwise, or local currency for a payphone or anything…" Shiro sighed.

"Or a way to get to him…" Hunk added.

"But we've got more than we did a moment ago!" Coran insisted as they all fell to devising a travel plan.

 **A/N** **Is this a little short? Probably. Is it late? Undeniably. But does it exist? Absolutely. Season five came out and reminded me that I had to write more for this story so here we go. This is still all written on my phone so don't judge me too harshly on my typos please** **~We'reAllABitOdd**


	14. Chapter 14

They stumbled through the dingy space for a little longer until the slight, wavering flame on Leo's finger reflected off of something.

It was subtle, so much so that they were about to walk past it before the light caught it a second time.

The moment it did Lance was overcome with a sort of antsy feeling he was sure had been there the whole time, lying dormant,and had awoken from a deep slumber when he caught sight of just what had bounced back their meagre light source.

It was a lift.

A lift!

A way out!

He didn't give Jason, ever the sensible one, a chance to protest - Lance knew it could well be the worst choice possible but he was stagnating in that sewer and every moment he spent there felt like it made his mind floatier and his lungs lesscooperative - before grabbing his friends by their shirts with nimble fingers and hauling them over.

"Gah!Lance!" Piper protested, both bitter and amused as she shoved her hair out of her eyes so she could try to read the directory.

"Greek," she commented dryly "there's a mall…"

And that was all it took to have Lance forcefully directing them once again, almost as though it took him no effort at all to do so.

It took Piper a moment to realise where she was after.

One second the door closed behind them (when had they opened?), the next they began to move (when had Lance pushed the button?), the next she was squealing,yelling at Lance like she was angry even though that wasn't strictly true and there wasn't a person among them who didn't know that.

Lance responded to her banshee impression with one of the lopsided smiles that seemed to favour his face.

It was the slyest she had seen so far; she was unsure whether to laugh or shove him across the small space as hard as she could.

So she did both.

He stumbled to the floor, giggling with a high tenor that made her think of a young child.

She voiced that opinion and he responded with a mumble she didn't quite catch.

It could have been "Marco,".

She had half a mind to respond with "Polo," but chose to change the subject.

"So," the lift had stopped, the doors opening once again "why were you so excited about there being a mall?"

She watched him and Leo exchange a sort of mischievous glance she knew better than to trust.

She wondered if they truly knew just what they were signifying to each other - somehow, she didn't think their seeming telepathy was exact.

They answered in unison.

"They're a good place to have fun," she looked from one pair of twinkling eyes to another and sighed before giving in.

She let her eyes light up and her chapped lips pull wider until they hurt and she couldn't bring herself to care.

She felt a split second of apprehension behind her before Jason quickly and decisively clasped her hand in his, the apprehension dissipating.

He too broke out into a smile.

In that moment, that mere collection of seconds, meagre fragment of a minute, speck of a lifetime, captured in time that seemed to clasp it and refuse to let go,all was good and well and all else was forgotten.

But that juncture was merely that, and fell away as though it were an ice lolly melting off of its stick.

They stepped out of the elevator and, before any of them could comprehend it, were standing face to face with a woman.

She was somewhat older in appearance, though in the world of myth that was indicative of almost nothing at all,with dark hair that seemed to teeter on the thin border between black and brown and eyes of the same description.

Her face was pale yet flushed, her nose straight and her eyebrows flat and long, giving her the look of someone who is permanently concerned about something or other,a look that was only heightened by the shape and permanent split of her rose-coloured lips.

"Hello," she split her rose lips and let the word fall like a loose petal.

Piper felt her skin crawl and every cell in her shiver and attempt to scramble as far from the metaphorical petal as they could.

"I am the princess of Colchis."

Piper ran gently quivering hands over arms covered in gooseflesh before stealing a glance at her companions; she needed a confirmation that her unease was justified.

But she turned to her friends and saw no suspicion.

She saw faces of captivated people, complacent and at peace, unquestioning and so trusting.

And so damn stupid!

The princess spoke again with a voice like velvet - Piper hated velvet.

"Come with me," she encouraged with a subtle smile that didn't reach her eyes and a graceful hand gesture "I have a shop that I would like to show you."

Piper was screaming at herself to say no, to do what Lance did and grab her friends by their shirts and haul them to where she wanted them to be with as much force as necessary.

But she didn't do anything.

She gritted her teeth and followed, tense and with her hand resting on katoptris so she was ready to spring at any moment.

She watched her friends carefully, noting their sluggishness and the way that Leo's paces, usually high-kneed to compensate for his diminutive stature,made his old dirty work boots drag along the ground as though trailing lifelessly after him.

They continued in their path and each footstep caused further discombobulation amongst her internal organs.

Her heart was beating at the back of her throat, her bladder sitting by her ankle, her lungs wrapped awkwardly around her spine, her kidneys somewhere by her head,her brain broken up into many tiny particles that raced through her bloodstream.

She tried to swallow but her mouth was dry.

Her hand was already aching but she tightened her anxious grip on her weapon.

They rounded a corner and her heart stopped beating and, against her will, her hand fell lax to her side.

She mixed the sounds of a sob and a wail and a protest aa she fell to her knees, unable to blink.

By her side, her friends did not react to her nor what she had seen.

They stood, simple, mindless, unaffected.

She didn't notice the princess turn on her in malice as she just stared until her eyes burned and long after.

She hadn't seen him in awhile but she had never suspected he would look like this when they met again.

She had not really known if they would meet again and she so wished they hadn't.

Short but strong and loud and funny, coach Hedge, the satyr who had kept them as safe as he could in the school year in his own strange way, stood in a cage.

He was confined to a small space and a small moment that never ended as he was trapped, arms out, goat legs bent and braced, grip tight on a weapon he was about to draw,in a frozen state Piper didn't think she could break if she tried.

She shook and stared at the satyr's cloven hooves until she saw a shadow come over her, casting her into darkness.

With red eyes she was sure awful Drew Tanaka would get a great kick out of if she saw and a raw throat that couldn't hope to charmspeak anyone, she looked up.

It was the princess, looming above her like some sort of demon.

Her eyes glinted and her mouth split into a wide smile that was somewhat maniacal.

She allowed her sinister intentions to dance across her face, once beautiful but now anything but, and put on a show.

Despite her clear ill-intent, the princess made no move to harm Piper.

She just looked down at her, imposing a sense of threatening superiority but nothing more.

In fact, she appeared amused, possibly even impressed.

"Well done," even the voice was different, changed from a smooth velvet to a smooth slime which Piper hated to admit she actually liked better.

At least she wasn't trying to hide the fact that there was a beast inside of that sweet-looking frame.

"You resisted my charm speak," her hands knitted together "well done.

Daughter of Aphrodite,"

Piper didn't ask how she knew who she was.

She struggled to choke out words and was in no mood to waste them.

"Who are you?" she tilted her head up and hoped her eyes weren't too puffy to be intimidating.

She forced herself up onto her unstable knee before sluggishly pulling herself up onto her feet,moving slowly as she was over aware of the protests of joints and muscles that wanted little more than to weep and sob and settle into one position and stay that way until her body stuck like coachHedge's.

She got no answer.

The princess screwed up her straight nose, her upper lip twitching, as she kept her venomous tongue tied and turned her back on Piper as though the quaking girl were little more than an insignificant pebble upon the pavement.

The enchantress' gaze fell upon the boys, still zombie-like and temporarily brain-dead, and her smile widened.

Piper couldn't see her face but she could sense danger growing more and more imminent.

The panic coursed through her and a sudden influx of anxiety sent her brain into overdrive - for the first time in her memory she was glad for the generally unpleasant feeling.

Every thought on every topic that was relevant in that moment raced into her head and she forced herself to filter them.

She pushed aside everything she could dismiss and focused on that which she couldn't until her head was pounding and her vision was becoming fuzzy.

Then the conclusion came to her and she had to stifle a gasp at her realisation as reality came rushing back to her.

At first everything was a jumble, both auditory and visual aspects of the surroundings forming a mush that slowly pulled itself apart into individual items.

"My beautiful boy," Piper hated the sound of the princess' voice and wanted nothing more than to rip her sharp pale nails away from Lance's smooth-skinned face "what a shame that this weapon you have here," her hand stayed at his face, resting on his sharp jaw, while her other traced the shape of the rifle he concealed beneath fabric "is so incompatible with those wielded by your wonderful friends.

It's a real shame that I won't get to see you at your best," she stuck out her bottom lip like a spoiled child as she procured a sword from what appeared (to Piper at least) to be nowhere.

She handed the blade to Lance who took it without question.

His arms barely moved under the heft of the sword as he shifted it to a comfortable fighting position.

Piper hated that he seemed to have a sort of instinct with the weapon, that he looked so capable when he wasn't his goofy, kind, friendly, helpful self.

He looked so capable when he was essentially a minion of a force that worked against everything that she stood for, that he stood for.

"Now, my wonderful boys," draw your weapons," Piper heard the sound of Jason's coin switching into a weapon.

She didn't look to see which form it had taken.

Instead, she turned her eyes on Leo and didn't see him.

He was there, sure, but, at the same time, he was anywhere but.

That was Leo's body: his tiny frame, odd fashion sense, magical tool belt, hammer, pointed ears, unruly curls, sharp eyes.

But it wasn't Leo - there was no humorous glint in his eyes, no smile playing at his lips, no asymmetric pose of a person who doesn't take themselves seriously.

She gulped as the boys began to move.

After only a single step she called out as loud as her strained larynx allowed, voice loaded with so much charmspeak she could taste it.

"Stop!

She's Medea!"


	15. Chapter 15

Pidge, Hunk, Keith and Shiro couldn't quite believe it when they landed there, in a desert so similar to the one they had left behind on their Earth it was hard to believe the two were different. They hid their ship away in the intricate cave systems that screamed so strongly of their home and the very cave where their lives really began.

They were in the right country now, the USA, where all reports of 'Meteor boy' placed their missing friend. They'd accumulated some money working odd jobs such as repairing people's damaged tech before travelling again. They had enough for food, Earth food, and a payphone if they could find one. They needed to find one. There was a number that they needed to call, one that would bring them to their friend.

They had changed into their Earth clothes in their lions, it wasn't standard but it was fitting, and had, after much deliberation, left Allura and Coran in the castle ship. They just weren't quite human and might be seen as suspicious. So, with some parting words, they left their alien companions to fret and bite their nails and bide their time. They hoped it wouldn't take long.

They walked for about an hour underneath the unrelenting glare of the burning sun and Pidge felt the sunburn consume the back of her neck and her glasses heat. She grit her teeth and said nothing.

Then they saw it; the small, rundown convenience store was almost like a beacon in the endless stretch of barren nothingness that was the landscape around them. Hunk hadn't given Shiro, Pidge and Keith a single moment to object as he grabbed them all by the sleeve and dragged them in. The door squeaked and the man behind the somewhat suspiciously stained counter looked at them with dark, untrusting eyes from beneath a similarly stained red truckers cap but there was food and drink a plenty and they were pretty much gasping for the stuff by that point. As Hunk and Pidge rapidly shovelled packaged, ready to eat food into their arms, Shiro and Keith rushed to the back of the shop where the drinks were. They piled themselves high with cold water bottles, iced coffee and a somewhat strange looking soda they could safely say they did not recognise from their own Earth. They then threw their loot down onto the counter and paid, sad to see their small quantity of hard-earned money diminishing as rapidly as it did.

"Say," Hunk began as he morosely peered into the cheap pink coin purse they had been keeping their money in "you wouldn't happen to know where we could find a payphone around here, would you?"

The man behind the till counted the coins he had been handed before slouching back in his chair and adjusting his hat so his wide, pale face was cast into shadow by its brim.

"I've got one in the back," he said as he gestured a large, hair-covered hand in the general direction of the phone "feel free to use it," his voice was definitely that of a long time smoker, though that was unsurprising considering the packet sticking out of his pocket and the distinctive smell that hovered about him.

A smile befitting of a cherub spread on Hunk's face as he spoke enthusiastic thanks and rushed for the door the man had pointed out. Pidge followed suit while Shiro thanked him politely and Keith kept his mouth firmly shut. The man let out a good natured chuckle as he watched Pidge and Hunk wrestle for the door (quite the futile effort on Pidge's part) and Keith felt the tension in his shoulders lessen minutely but did not neglect to look behind himself periodically.

Pidge pulled the ruined scrap of newspaper from her pocket and, through the abundant water damage, read the number. She punched it in to the wall-mounted phone and waited as the phone on the other side presumably rang. They waited and waited until they were about to give up and call at a later time but then the phone sounded and Pidge pressed the receiver to her ear.

"Mark Roberts speaking," a voice spoke from across the line. Mark sounded tired.

"Ummm, hello," she began unsurely "this is Katie Holt, Hunk Garrett, Keith Kogane and Takashi Shirogane calling you to address a matter concerning the so-called meteor boy,"

"Oh!" and, just like that, the voice became excited and undeniably awake. "It's just a check so that we know we won't be putting the kid in danger before we disclose any information about him, but we need to ask you a simple question. Ideally the question would be a little, well, you know… but what is the real name of meteor boy?"

Hunk responded without missing a beat, speaking loud enough to ensure he was heard "Lance McClain!"

"McClain…" Mark mused for a moment "the kid had forgotten his surname but Lance was certainly there. Okay, so, as much as I hate to tell you this, there is a small issue surrounding returning your friend to you."

"Which is?" Shiro asked as he plucked the phone from Pidge's nimble hand with a mumbled apology.

"We sent him to school but he and a group of other students, three or four I think, as well as the school gym coach went missing. Try as we might, neither myself or the agency I work for has had any luck in locating him." while he was clear, concise and to the point, he sounded upset. The fatigue was crawling through his throat once again and he punctuated his explanation with a barely stifled yawn.

"No!" their entire group chorused, a conglomerate of disappointment, sadness and frustration filling the small, dusty room.

"We were so close!" Hunk protested as he took his turn to hold the phone.

"Would it be possible for us to meet in person for further discussion?"

"Yes, I suppose it would,"

"Great! We'll need to organise that now because we don't have any personal phones you could use to contact us…"

He sighed "Got it,"

So, while Lance was still missing and they were still aching to get him back, they had gotten somewhere.

The night came and went and they slept beneath its open skies that stretched on for an infinity that the landscape could not hope to disrupt. A small town was nestled into the landscape almost directly beside them and beyond it lay the city they had to reach by noon. In the darkness the lights of the city glistened like the stars above.

Hunk would attest that those constellations were not the same as the ones he saw from his own back garden or the roof of the garrison but he would also admit they made him feel at home. He had come so strikingly close to forgetting what it was like to stargaze that the experience brought back the warm winds of nighttime at home, the soft floral of his mother's perfume, the sweetness of his cookies.

They woke up early as the sun shone above them and began to sear at their eyes before burning their skin. Shiro rose with a yawn as Keith helped himself to a small breakfast while Pidge and Hunk checked their inventory before they left.

They were at the city by noon as planned. However, they had to catch a train to New York and only had about half an hour to do so. Perhaps that shouldn't have been too great of a challenge but they had little to no idea of where the station was.

Eventually they found someone who knew where it was and was able to give directions that were concise enough to guide them to their destination with few further complications. They paid for their ticket and watched even more of their money disappear. They jumped onto their train the moment before the doors closed and quickly moved to the last of the empty seats.

Pidge ended up next to Hunk with Keith and Shiro on the other side of the carriage. She was silently clenching her teeth as she looked at the child's ticket in her hand. A child's ticket. For a 15 year old. The age cut-off was 11! She wasn't that short (or at least she hoped so…).

Hunk shuffled with mild levels of discomfort as he felt his stomach rumble but was too intimidated by the furious waves radiating off of Pidge to request the bag containing the snacks.

She fizzled out after 10 minutes and he didn't even consider thinking it was a stupid thing to be intimidated by her. Sure, she was tiny and sure, she was young, but she was dangerous and he was sure he could get some of the galra to testify (assuming they didn't try to kill him first). A moment later he was munching happily on a packet of salt and vinegar crisps as Pidge gulped down some of the weird soda. She chucked another packet of crisps at the back of Keith's head and watched the confusion flood his face before he shook his head and tore open the bag. She giggled.

When they reached New York Shiro had to shake Keith awake. He had, at some point, fallen asleep with his head lulling against the dirty window, the back of his hair pushed up in such a way Shiro was sure he'd struggle to get it to lay flat again before they met with Mark.

They walked into the coffee shop near the station a fair ten minutes earlier than planned and ordered their drinks. Pidge and Keith went for black coffee with sugar while Hunk got an iced coffee and Shiro black tea. He passed the money across the counter and took a sip of the tea. It was better on their Earth but it would do.

They found a table in the back of the almost empty shop, out of the range of sight and, hopefully, hearing of the door and the woman behind the counter so they could talk without concern.

As promised, ten minutes later a man of average height with dark hair and bags beneath his eyes dressed in a navy blue business suit walked in. He made a beeline to them and, in a professional tone, asked "Katie Holt, Hunk Garrett, Keith Kogane, Takashi Shirogane?"

"Mark Roberts?" Shiro responded.

"That's me," he smiled.

"Nice to meet you," Shiro returned the reserved smile and introduced their group properly.

"You know," Mark began a moment later, after he had bought his own drink "you are the first people that have seriously contacted me about Lance. I had honestly given up. I'm really sorry about the fact that he went missing, I hope you might be willing to help us find him?"

"Absolutely," Pidge nodded "we've been looking for him for a while and we definitely aren't about to give up!"

"That's nice of you. It's nice seeing his friends. He's a nice boy,"

Hunk really appreciated the lack of the word "was". He knew his best friend would be fine but he also knew he'd probably managed to get himself caught up in some of the crazy going-ons of this world. It seemed like something he would do.

"So," Mark leant his elbows on the table and they were all desperate to listen 'What can you tell me about Lance? There are a few government forms we need to fill out and you guys seem like our best opportunity so far to get the information we need."

"Okay." Shiro responded "What do you need to know?" he tried to hide the dread he was feeling towards one of the questions he knew was going to come up. Sure enough, it was the first one.

"What is his date of birth?"

"Ummm…" Shiro was forced to mumble as Pidge thought as fast as she could.

"I'm not good with years," she premised with a feigned apology "but he's 17 and his birthday is the 28th of July."

Mark nodded "Thank you - surname?"

"McClain," Hunk said.

Another nod "Place of birth?"

"Varadero, Cuba,"

They ran through a series of similar questions until Mark put down his pen and returned the form to his bag.

"Thank you all again. Before we discuss the matter of actually finding Lance there's a matter of personal curiosity I wonder if you'd be willing to answer for me?"

"Okay," Shiro agreed with no lack of apprehension. They had a lot to hide.

"Another thanks. It's just, well… Lance stayed with me for awhile," Keith nodded, hoping the following sentence wouldn't reveal things they would rather weren't known by a planet that knew nothing of the mysteries and dangers of the light years beyond their own solar system.

Mark continued "He had a somewhat disturbing habit - he would talk on his sleep but he seemed scared or worried," and then, all at once, all of the present Paladins felt their hearts fall to their feet.

"He said all of your names except Katie's as well as a few more unusual things. Do any of you know what Voltron, coloured lions, Alteans, Allura, Coran, Galra and Pidge mean?"

"Well, Pidge is Katie but none of the others," Hunk dismissed, knowing full well that Mark could see through his lie.

"Hmmm," Mark looked him dead in the before moving onto Pidge then Keith and ending on Shiro "I'd like to invite you back to mine for further discussion," before any of them could answer he gave them a warning "And I fear I have to remind you that there are no circumstances under which lying to a government official is acceptable."

Hunk gulped.

 **A/N**

 **Hello. I know this is late but school is finally out so I have summer to hopefully focus a bit more on the things I like to do, such as writing. I want everyone to know that I promise I do read and appreciate every review but I can't respond because I still don't have a computer. Therefore, if you have any things for me to change in a new chapter please tell me as soon after it goes up as possible (because I have a bit of an issue with finding old documents). Also, I'm really excited about season 7, especially after finding out about Adam (we LGBTQ people are suckers for representation) but I don't think I'm going to put any Shallura in this for that reason. I will, however, readily be introducing a little bit of Klance but I will also warn that I, personally, have some complicated, not necessarily positive thoughts about romance and love so I'm not confident in my ability to write it. Also, finally, I have a question for everyone reading this. Would you mind if I raised the rating to T? There's not a big thing behind it, I'm just a British teenager who swears too much surrounded other British teenagers who swear too much so it seems unrealistic to me to have teenagers in some of these situations who aren't swearing at all (though I suppose I could use some of the things that one specific friend of mine that doesn't swear uses as alternatives, including, and I quote, "Pooholes"). Language and, possibly, violence are the only things that will change and they won't unless most people are okay with that change.** **As always, thank you for all kinds of response to this story and constructive criticism is always welcome.**

 **All the best,**

 **We'reAllABitOdd**


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